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Father, daughter drown in icy pond

Sheriff: Man tried to save 9-year-old after she fell through ice

Divers search in the icy water while emergency vehicles wait on the side of the pond.

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(CNN) -- The bodies of a father and his 9-year-old daughter were pulled from an ice-covered pond in Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, on Friday, hours after they fell through, authorities said.

Authorities suspect the girl fell through to the icy water while skating and her 44-year-old father fell through the ice while trying to pull her out, Sheboygan County Sheriff Michael Helmke said. The girl's sister, 6, witnessed the incident and ran to a nearby house to get help.

"We were unable to make a rescue," Helmke said.

Rescuers, dressed in red and yellow protective suits and tethered together, converged on the scene about 11 a.m. local and recovered the father's body from the pond about three hours later. It took another 45 minutes to find the girl.

From two inflatable rafts, the rescue workers used poles in an attempt to detect anything below the water's surface.

Video from the scene showed at least three fire trucks on the pond's edge with two ladders extended into the water. Ambulances waited nearby.

The ice was about 3 inches thick -- thinner in some areas -- and the pond was between 8- and 10-feet deep, authorities said. Solid ice 2-inches thick can support one person on foot or skates, according to data available on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Web site.

The accident was the second of the day in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. Earlier Friday police rescued an 11-year-old boy from a pond in Waldo after he went through the ice on his all-terrain vehicle, according to the sheriff's office.

Cedar Grove is a Lake Michigan town of approximately 2,000 people about 30 miles north of Milwaukee. The temperature in the region early Friday afternoon was about 22 degrees.

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