More details revealed about Saturday’s tragedy on Lake Texana
Funeral services for the 41-year-old Hallettsville man who drowned Saturday evening at Lake Texana near Edna have been scheduled for later this week in Yoakum and Sweet Home.
Donnie Hart Jr., 41, died tragically late Saturday while out at the lake with his family. Details were still in the works as this story was written, but a visitation has been planned from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, July 7, at Thiele -Cooper Funeral Home in Yoakum, with a rosary and funeral to follow at 9:30 a.m. Friday, July 8, at Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Sweet Home.
Members of Hart’s family contacted the newspaper Tuesday afternoon to visit some about the circumstances of his passing.
“We’d all gone to the lake, his wife, and their three kids, his niece, his brother and me, and Donnie happened to see that this float had come loose from the boat start floating away,” said Jordan Hart, Donnie’s sister-in-law.
She said that Donnie, an oilfield consultant, probably wouldn’t have minded much about the float if his wife, Kara, hadn’t spent several minutes earlier that day blowing the thing up.
“I heard him say, I got it, and he took off,” Jordan told us, tears breaking her voice.
Donnie fired off his boat and away he went, his 13-year-old daughter Emme by his side. Everyone else remained on shore. And much like earlier reports, the wind played havoc on that float, blowing it farther and farther away every time he got close.
“I figured he would’ve reached it with something,” Jordan said. “I didn’t even know he dove in.”
But that’s what he apparently chose to do, taking his shirt off before he jumped in the water. There once more, the wind proved troublesome, so he kept swimming farther out, Emme watching him from the boat.
After a while, Jordan told us that Emme called them from the boat, which was a good distance from the bank by then.
Kara caught the call on her watch, the reception poor. “Dad’s in the water,” they barely made out, and Emme didn’t know how to operate the boat.
That’s when Donnie’s wife, Kara, took off, trying frantically to find help, someone who could get them out to the boat at very least.
Meanwhile, Donnie had been out in the water, swimming, for a good 15-20 minutes by then, Jordan told us. “We thought we saw him in the water there for a while, but then he was gone,” she said, adding that aside from the sheer distance and choppy waters that day, all were extremely familiar with the many alligators that live in those waters. None dared swimming out to them.
Jordan said rescuers eventually returned Emme to her family back on shore and sent out search divers for Donnie. They wouldn’t find him until his body floated up to the surface.
Of course, by then, his sister-in-law added, it was far too late.
“It’s been terrible time,” Jordan told us. “We’re getting along about as well as can be expected, I guess. It’s just awful to think this all happened because of $5 float.”
Donnie leaves behind Kara, his wife; Emme, his daughter; sons, Trae (Donnie III), 12, and Kolton, 6; two brothers, Chris Hart and wife Jordan (both there that day), and their other brother, also named Jordan Hart, of Sweet Home; parents, Cheri and Donnie Hart Sr., of Sweet Home, (not there); niece, Avery Hart, 10 (there); and nephews, Ayden, 16, and Landon, 14, of Schulenburg (not there).