WILLMAR, MINN. – The women gathered around Lul Mohamed, putting their hands on her shoulders, the back of her neck, the crown of her head. She cried, clutching a photo of her son, Ahmed Hashi, and the homework he never he had a chance to complete.
Hashi, 11, and his friend Idris Hussein, 10, were found Tuesday night in the shallow water of Foot Lake, less than a block from Hashi's house. Neither of the fourth-graders could swim, Mohamed said, via an interpreter. But just the other day, she had decided to enroll Hashi in swim lessons.
"If they knew how to swim, they would be alive," Mohamed, 37, said Wednesday, hours before the Somali-American boys' bodies were buried. Dozens of women crowded the homes of Hashi and Hussein, whose families live not far from one another in this western Minnesota city, to offer the families comfort and prayers. Hundreds of neighbors, relatives and teachers later gathered at the cemetery, where one leader called for changes that would prevent another child from drowning.
Minority children are more likely than white children to be victims of drowning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for reasons that include less access to pools and swimming lessons.
Hashi and Hussein, classmates at Kennedy Elementary School, had gone missing Tuesday afternoon. The pair had played soccer together, then asked Mohamed whether they could walk to the nearby mosque. But Mohamed asked them to wait for her, stepping inside the house to change.
By the time she went back outside, the boys had "disappeared," she said Wednesday. She asked her other children, then looked around the neighborhood. Floating in the lake, near the dock, she saw a sandal.
Mohamed doesn't speak English, so she called Hussein's father, asking him to alert the police.
Dozens of Somali community members gathered, including Najib Abi, a cultural liaison with the school district. They prayed together, he said, telling the parents "hopefully we will have good news before the end of the night."
