The two girls carried through a tunnel on floodwaters into the dammed section of Bald Eagle Creek near the American Eagle Paper Mill in Tyrone before being rescued Sunday were not playing on an inflatable before being swept away, according to the mother of one of the girls.

Rather, the girls were walking on flooded Lincoln Avenue toward the car of someone there to pick them up when the daughter lost a shoe that floated off to the side, beyond the street, upon which her friend tried to retrieve the shoe, but stepped into much deeper water over the hidden entrance to a drain tunnel under railroad tracks parallel to the street, after which the daughter tried to help — resulting in both being carried through the tunnel into the creek, the mother said.

The daughter ended up extricating herself from the water and someone helped the friend out, according to the mother, who said both were traumatized by the experience.

The incorrect report about the inflatable seems to have occurred because an inflatable that wasn’t present at the time of the accident was there later, having been washed down on the floodwaters, the mother said.

“We are being attacked as parents,” she said. “(But) they (her daughter and friend and three other girls who were with them) were not goofing off.”

One of the other three girls tried unsuccessfully to hold back her daughter, the mother said.