Teen believed to have drowned in the Kaweah River identified by family

TULARE COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- A heartbroken family shares these pictures of 17-year-old Bree Scott.

An honor roll student who just graduated from Tulare Western High School, where she was a Cheer Captain, ASB President and had recently won a Mustang of the Year award.

She had been accepted to CSU Fullerton in hopes of becoming a teacher.

But as of Wednesday afternoon, Bree is missing, lost in the rushing waters of Kaweah River.

Her family shares that she was with a friend, who said they were sitting on a rock when they fell in.

Bree never managed to get out.

"We are going to work tirelessly until we recover this little girl. There is a lot we can do, but there is a lot we are unable to do because we are not going to trade the life of one of our rescuers for a deceased person," says Kevin Kemmerling, a Lt. Tulare County Sheriff's Office.

Tulare County Sheriff's Search and Rescue Crew and other agencies have been searching the area at the entrance of the Sequoia National Park since they got the call Tuesday evening around five.

The crews have been battling cold and dangerous waters rushing downstream at 1,500 cubic feet per second.

Investigators are confident Bree's body is no longer in the area where she fell; now they're searching downriver.

Within 100 yards of where she went in was a whirlpool.

"If a person gets swept into a low head dam a lot of times they will continue to cycle in that water and find it very hard to get out of it. And that is the complexity with this particular location," explains Matthew Smith.

Bree's family was too devastated to speak with us.

But they say she was a loving and funny person.

Family also shares that Bree was terrified of the water.

She lost her dad in a drowning incident in 2008 when she was just 14 months old.

Now, her family is in disbelief that the dangerous waters have brought so much pain to them once again.

"This is absolutely tragic and heartbreaking for all of us. And that's why we can just never continue to stop getting the message out that these rivers are really dangerous and this was probably a slip and fall accident where she had no intentions of going swimming," explains Lt. Kemmerling.

"It was just senseless, but it was nobody's fault. It was just an accident," he continues.

The Tulare County Sheriff's Office says there have been three drownings this year, and a total of four last year.

For news updates, follow Kassandra Gutierrez on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.