(CNN) An 18-year-old died trying to save his family from a car submerged in water after it plunged off a gravel road and into a canal in Delaware Sunday morning.

The teen was driving his two younger brothers, his girlfriend, and a cousin to a youth football game around 9:41 a.m. ET when their car went into the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal about 20 miles southwest of Wilmington, Delaware, according to authorities.

First responders located a 16-year-old girl on the canal banks in Middletown about a mile west of the William Roth Bridge. She told them the 18-year-old helped her get to shore and then returned to the water to rescue the other three passengers.

"However he died as a result of his efforts to do that," Master Corporal Michael Austin, a Delaware State Police public information officer, said in a press conference Monday morning.

His body was recovered from the water shortly after rescuers arrived, he added.

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