A newly released 911 recording has revealed the frantic moments after a boat struck a channel marker at the Jersey Shore, throwing two young siblings into the dark water and setting off a desperate family effort to save them.

Mya Bella Golabek, 9, and her 7-year-old brother, Sigmund Paul Golabek, were riding in a 28-foot boat with family members on Barnegat Bay when the vessel crashed at approximately 9 p.m. on July 19.

Their grandfather, 64-year-old Stephen Schneider, was operating the boat and has since been accused of doing so while intoxicated.

In the emergency recording obtained by NBC New York, the children’s grandmother, Laurie Schneider, can be heard urgently explaining that one child had been recovered while her husband was still in the water searching for the other.

Her voice conveyed the panic unfolding aboard the damaged vessel as the dispatcher attempted to determine the children’s condition and pinpoint the family’s location near Berkeley Township.

Asked whether the children were unconscious, she answered that they were.

At another point, she tried to establish whether the crash had occurred near channel marker 39 while reporting that her husband was still attempting to bring one of the children out of the water.

Stephen and Laurie Schneider ultimately recovered both children. Family members immediately began performing CPR as emergency responders rushed toward the scene.

Mya and Sigmund were transported to a nearby hospital, but neither child survived.

Authorities allege that Schneider had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.16—twice the legal limit—when the boat struck the wooden navigation marker. The collision reportedly threw both children from the vessel.

Schneider later told investigators that he had consumed three beers over approximately two hours during a family dinner with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren.

He voluntarily surrendered at the Berkeley Township Police Department in Ocean County and was taken into custody.

Prosecutors charged him with two counts of reckless vessel homicide, also described under New Jersey law as death by vessel. He additionally faces accusations of operating a vessel under the influence and recklessly operating a vessel.

The charges remain allegations. Schneider has not been convicted and is entitled to the presumption of innocence as the case proceeds through court.

The tragedy has placed the children’s devastated family in an almost unimaginable position: grieving two young lives while confronting criminal allegations against a grandfather whom they continue to describe as loving and devoted.

That painful conflict became especially clear during Schneider’s court appearance.

In an extraordinary request, the children’s father—Schneider’s son-in-law—asked the judge to release him from jail. Through a letter read in court by Schneider’s attorney, the father described him as an important and compassionate member of the family.

“He’s been there for our family in ways that words cannot fully express,” the letter stated.

The grieving father also described Schneider as a wonderful father-in-law and loving grandfather with a generous heart.

A judge ultimately granted his request for release while the case moves forward.

The family’s support does not eliminate the seriousness of the allegations. Prosecutors will be required to prove that Schneider operated the boat while intoxicated and that his actions caused the fatal collision.

But the father’s plea exposed the extraordinary emotional complexity surrounding the case. The man accused of causing the deaths is not a stranger to the victims. He is their grandfather—a person the family says loved the children and must now live with the consequences of the night they died.

The newly released emergency call adds another heartbreaking dimension.

It captures no courtroom arguments and offers no legal conclusions. Instead, it preserves the confusion and terror of a grandmother trying to communicate with a dispatcher while one child lay unconscious and her husband searched the water for the other.

Behind every charge listed in the court record are two children whose lives ended during what had begun as a family evening on the water.

Photographs shared after the tragedy show Mya and Sigmund smiling together, including an image of the siblings posing beside a school chalkboard sign. Those ordinary family memories now stand in devastating contrast to the final moments recorded in the emergency call.

The criminal proceedings will determine Schneider’s legal responsibility.

For the family, however, there is no verdict capable of reversing what happened on Barnegat Bay. The 911 recording preserves the moment their evening became a nightmare—and the desperate rescue effort that could not bring two young siblings home.