Two children who had been missing after a car driven by their mother was swept into a creek have been found dead.

As CrimeOnline previously reported, rescuers in North Carolina had been searching for two children who were lost overnight Monday, after a road they were driving on in Smithfield was washed out, forcing the car into a creek.

The children’s mother was brought to safety during the initial rescue effort. WSOC-TV reports that the two children, identified as 4-year-old Abraham and 5-year-old Alexa, were found dead on Thursday. Investigators found the children’s bodies about 30 feet apart in shallow water.

According to the report, rescuers had earlier made contact with one of the children, but the child slipped away into the floodwaters when the rescue boat capsized.

”The water was so raging the other night, it was throwing the boats up against the trees,”  Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell told the news station. “We’re fortunate that we had no loss of life for first responders the other night.”

The report did not provide a last name for the children, and the mother had not been publicly identified.

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[Feature image: AP Photo/Matt Slocum]