By Ben Fractenberg, Gabriela Resto-Montero and Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producers
HARLEM — A makeshift memorial sat outside the Columbia Secondary School Wednesday, paying tribute to Nicole Suriel, the sixth-grader who drowned on a school trip to Long Beach while swimming without lifeguard supervision.
Classmates, parents and teachers left flowers and votive candles atop the morning's newspapers, which relayed the story of Suriel's tragic death a day earlier.
The 12-year-old was one of three children at the school who emergency service workers attempted to rescue when they became stuck in a riptide at Long Beach.
There was no lifeguard on duty at the time and signs clearly stated that swimming was prohibited.
Still, the trip chaperones — of which there were only 3 for 24 students — allowed the children to enter the water.
Nicole's uncle, Basilio Suriel, 55, told DNAinfo the family was gathered at her grandmother's Harlem apartment to discuss funeral arrangements Wednesday afternoon.
"You have to look after your kids. We trusted the school," he said.
Earlier, Nicole's father Juan Suriel told the Times he wouldn't have let his daughter go on the trip if he'd known about the lack of supervision.
"If I knew that there were no lifeguards, I wouldn't have let her go," the distraught father said.
Asked whether the school was to blame for the accident, Isaac Freeman, a 6th grade parent who stopped to pay his respects at the memorial, said he didn't think so.
"I would not call the school reckless," the 49-year-old Morningside Heights resident said. "The school has good intentions. Sometimes in life, things happen."
But another parent, Salim Washington, was not so accepting.
"I'd like to see an investigation," Washington said outside the school Wednesday morning.
Witnesses of the tragedy recalled that one of the chaperones nearly drowned trying to reach Suriel and two of her classmates when she realized they were caught in a riptide, according to the New York Post.
The two other students were quickly rescued but Suriel's body was not found for another 80 minutes, the paper reported.
Suriel won her spot on the field trip to Long Beach by raising money during a fund-raising walkathon for the school, papers said.
Nicole's uncle said that the little girl, who has a 10-year-old sister and 2-year-old brother, played a special role within the family.
"Nicole was the family's doll," he said. "She was her father's doll. She was the sweetest thing in our family."
