A tragic turn on Lake Macbride claims ‘strong swimmer’

CEDAR RAPIDS — Inaam Smital came home late from work Friday, and after a quick grocery trip, was sitting in her home in Illinois when about 10 p.m. she got the worst call a mother can get: Her daughter and her new boyfriend had drowned earlier that day in Lake Macbride near Solon.

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Someone at the lake called 911 at 3:44 p.m. to report that two people — later identified as Suad Alyasiri, 28, and Willie Davis, 23, both of Cedar Rapids — had tipped a canoe and disappeared under the water, according to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.

Neither was wearing a life jacket when the canoe, a rental, tipped, the Sheriff’s Office said. The first deputy arrived on the scene about 10 minutes after the call, at 3:54 p.m., according to the Sheriff’s Office. Emergency responders began searching for Alyasiri and Davis, and the Johnson County Metro Dive Team recovered their bodies about 7 p.m. They were taken to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for autopsies.

Smital has yet to see her daughter’s body. After she got the news Friday, she drove immediately to Iowa. When she was in Solon, near the lake, she hit a deer with her car. A sheriff’s deputy was nearby and saw the crash. The deputy pulled her over after she continued driving, despite parts of her car being broken.

After realizing Smital was Alyasiri’s mother, he offered to have her follow him to the lake and helped her find Alyasiri’s car and get inside it.

“He was very helpful, very understanding,” Smital said. “He suggested I not go to the hospital yet, because they wouldn’t let me in anyway. But I went anyway, and they told me to come the next day. I went the next day and they didn’t let me in, either.”

Smital raised her six children in the Cedar Rapids area after moving from Saudi Arabia, where Alyasiri was born, in 1995. Smital moved to Illinois six years ago. Alyasiri moved then with her mother, but returned to Cedar Rapids shortly after and had been working as a hair stylist.

“She was a very good person. She always helped everybody. … She was always fun to be around, kind to others. She liked the outdoors,” Smital said of her daughter.

Alyasiri is the second of Smital’s children to die prematurely. Her younger son, Yassir Alyasiri, died three years ago from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells. Suad Alyasiri was close with her younger brother, and had recently posted a GoFundMe fundraiser page asking for help paying for a headstone to mark his grave.

But Alyasiri didn’t know that Smital already had purchased a headstone but hadn’t yet installed it. She said she informed her daughter of this after seeing the GoFundMe post.

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“They could never leave each other’s sides. They were always in contact with each other, constantly. They were very, very close. All my kids are close to each other. They get their disagreements here and there, but in reality, they’re always together,” Smital said.

Smital and her family are hoping to have a funeral for Suad Alyasiri in the next few days, held at Brosh Chapel in Cedar Rapids. A GoFundMe post was started by one of Smital’s other children to help pay for the funeral costs.

Smital said she has reached out to the family of Davis, her daughter’s boyfriend. She said her daughter had been dating Davis for just a few months, and Smital had spoken with him only once.

She said she believes her daughter may have tried to help Davis after the canoe tipped.

“She’s a good swimmer, but I can’t imagine she would give up on anybody. I’m very sure she gave up her life for him. She probably refused to swim away. She could have saved herself by swimming away, but I know her. She would never do that.” Smital said.

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