Friends and family watched in horror as a healthcare worker drowned in a swimming pool while filming a live stream on Facebook. Hellen Nyabuto, a Kenyan nursing student working in Canada, died during the stream on Thursday. In the video, Nyabuto, 24, can be seen talking to onlookers in the shallow end of the pool. He then swims off-screen into deeper water. As he exits the frame, he is heard calling for help. A few minutes later, the live stream goes silent. The live stream continues for hours until other residents of the motel show up as they go swimming in the pool. The same swimmers discover Nyabuto’s body and call the motel’s front desk. “I saw this video. I cried. It’s terrible,” Nyabuto’s father John Kiyondi told CNN. “He contacted me two days before he went missing. It sounded very nice and I was very happy.’ Kiyondi, 56, lives in Kisii, Kenya. Nyabuto, who followed Hellen Wendy on social media, had five siblings, including a younger brother who lived with her in Canada. “Helen Wendy was full of life. With a warm smile and a charming heart,” her brother Enock wrote in a GoFundMe post. “Everyone who met Wendy was uplifted. She was passionate about her work and touched many hearts.’ Nyabuto worked in long-term care in Chatsworth, Ontario. He died in a motel pool near the town of Collingwood. “She worked with the elderly until the end,” her friend Alfonce Nyamwaya told the Toronto Star. “He really had a passion for it.” Her family is raising money to repatriate her body back to Kenya. “According to our tradition, one is supposed to be buried where one was born,” her father said. “I will not feel comfortable, psychologically, if my daughter is buried away from Kenya.” Enock’s GoFundMe campaign had raised more than $50,000 as of Wednesday afternoon to cover repatriation costs. Ontario Provincial Police said they are taking steps to remove the full video of Nyabuto’s death from the internet. It has already been removed from Facebook. Contact our news team by emailing us at [email protected] For more stories like this, check out our news page.
