Julian Ryan’s final words to his mother, as floodwaters quickly engulfed their trailer home, were simply, “I love you.”

“He died a hero and that will never go unnoticed,” Connie Salas said. Through tears and shock, the family of 27-year-old Ryan said the father, brother and fiancé died a hero. In the early Friday morning hours, floodwater suddenly swelled into the home he shared with Wilson and his mother in Ingram, close to the Guadalupe River.