• The victim, identified by the Tarrant County Coroner as Lincer Lopez, was baptized at Lake Waxahachie just moments before a girl from the church group began drowning.
• Jacob Bell eventually rescued the drowning girl and later brought Lopez’s body to shore, he tells PEOPLE
• “He was trying to support his family in Mexico,” says Bell

Moments after his baptism, a 21-year-old man died while trying to save a girl from drowning in a Texas lake.

According to Waxahachie police, authorities responded to a 911 call about a drowning accident at Boat Dock Park on Lake Waxahachie at approximately 12:45 p.m. local time on Saturday, August 24. When they arrived, they found that the man had drowned while attempting to rescue the girl.

A nearby boater pulled the girl, who was part of a large church group from Garland, Texas, from the water, police said. She was resuscitated and taken to a hospital for further treatment.

“The 21-year-old man was recovered from the lake and taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead,” the statement said.

The agency did not release the victim’s name, but ABC affiliate WFAA reported that the medical examiner’s office identified him as Lincer Lopez.

The Tarrant County Coroner did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

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Lincer’s family and friends told WFAA that he was at the lake for his baptism and that the church group was in the water afterward when the young girl began to drown.

In an interview with PEOPLE on Monday, August 26, Jacob Bell, the boater who ultimately rescued the drowning girl, said he and his friend Craig McDonald were fishing that morning. After dropping McDonald off at the boat ramp, Bell, 47, said he heard screaming.

“I looked over there and saw this little girl swimming toward me, and I was probably a hundred yards away from her,” Bell says, saying he saw her “holding onto someone else” whose head was “under water.”

Bell, who pulled both girls into the boat, remembers the drowning teenager turning blue when he began CPR. “I just kept pumping,” he says. “And then she started vomiting and started taking deep breaths again.”

When he came ashore and police began to help the girl, Bell said he heard a group of people talking in Spanish about there being someone else out there.

“I ran out to the lake and where they were pointing,” Bell says. “I dove down a couple of times and then I could feel them down there on the bottom. It was probably 12 feet deep, and I pulled him up off the bottom and kind of dragged him to where the police were.”

As for Lincer, Bell said he was told the 21-year-old had been baptized less than an hour before the incident and was “trying to support his family in Mexico.”

Lincer’s uncle Jacobo Lopez told WFAA that his late nephew was a hero. “He didn’t think twice about saving someone else,” Lopez said.

A GoFundMe campaign was set up so that the man’s family could transport his body to his hometown of Chiapas, Mexico. As of August 26, the fundraiser had raised around $13,000.

PEOPLE has reached out to the GoFundMe organizer for more information.