North Texas family's dream Bahamas vacation turns into nightmare after husband and father nearly cut in half by boat propeller
A 42-year-old husband and father is in intensive care in a Miami hospital after a crime in the Bahamas that almost cost him his life.
After a flight from DFW that arrived in the Bahamas on Monday, the Slough family couldn't wait to pose for a photo on the beach before a 10-day vacation in Exuma.
But minutes later, on the first day of the trip, something happened in the water that would change their lives forever.
Slough family
"Just like a 20-minute snorkel, you know, right there on the beach, right before we ate," said Whitney Slough.
Whitney Slough said her husband, Brent, and their two daughters were snorkeling only about 20 feet from the beach when a small boat appeared along the shoreline.
"I saw this boat speeding so close to shore, and I was like, 'what the hell?'" Whitney Slough said.
"I felt like a thump thump, and I was like, 'did I just get hit by a boat?'" said Brent Slough.
A 42-year-old former Army Ranger, Brent Slough almost had the lower half of his body sliced off by the propeller blade as it plowed over him.
"His bottom was almost completely detached from his legs," said Whitney Slough.
"My left leg wasn't functioning, and I felt like something was wrong with my lower body," Brent Slough said.
The trauma amplified when the couple's teenage daughter had to rescue her father with a float.
Meanwhile, the boat, captured on a security camera, kept going.
"So I surfaced and I looked to my right and I see two guys in a boat and one of them looks back and they just keep on going," Brent Slough said.
What followed was a harrowing trip in the back of a truck to an ambulance jet that would take Brent Slough to a hospital in the U.S.
"The doctor told me, 'please get to a hospital in Miami, you need to get to the U.S. for something this traumatic," said Brent Slough.
The injuries include multiple leg fractures and deep gashes that doctors say could still be life-threatening if they become infected.
But the couple knows it could be worse.
"This was God getting us through this 100%," Whitney Sough said.
With their daughters still in the Bahamas, their mother is heading back and on a mission: She is determined to find the men on this boat.
"Oh, they're going to be found," she said.
Whitney Slough worries that authorities won't find the boat responsible without her persistence.
"It's against the law to be within 200 feet of the shore," Whitney Slough said. "Brent was about 20 feet out ... I just wish they would turn themselves in, but if they don't turn themselves in, then we have to find them."
A family vacation that should be carefree, but instead turned into horror for the Prosper family, which will eventually need help arranging an expensive private ambulance flight from Miami to Dallas. Friends of the family have started a GoFundMe for expenses.
"It breaks my heart because we're not on vacation together, and we are not with our girls at the same time," said Whitney Slough. "I'm so grateful that he's alive."
If there's one thing that the Sloughs said others can learn from their experience, it's how much they wish they had travel medical insurance for a trip out of the country.
CBS News Texas contacted authorities in the Bahamas about the investigation, but have not been able to reach anyone familiar with the case.
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