Heartbroken friends recount how girl, 16, drowned at Queens Rockaway Beach after dad’s warnings: ‘We were all yelling for help’ (EXCLUSIVE)

A teenager who drowned in rough waters off a Queens beach brushed off her father’s worries over what became her first — and last — visit to the Rockaways.

As temperatures soared to an unseasonable high of over 90 degrees, Diaka Kourouma, 16, and friends from the Bronx decided to go swimming at Rockaway Beach, even though none had ever been there before.

According to several friends, the group arrived around noon and swam all day in an area observed by lifeguards. Around 6 p.m., two lifeguards directed them to another area of the beach, which was not being watched, they said.

It was there, near Beach 116th St., they all struggled against a deadly riptide that pulled Diaka under.

“We went into the water,” said Mariame Soumah, 18, one of the girls on the trip. “She came with me, because I was in the water with her. And afterwards, we all started drowning. We were all yelling for help. I didn’t hear her. I was yelling for help.”

Diaka was pulled out of the water near Beach 108th St., cops said.

She was one of two people to drown visiting Rockaway Beach that day around the same time. A second person, a man between 18 and 20 years old, drowned in waters off Beach 98th St., said cops. His name has not been released.

Both victims were taken to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

Diaka’s father, Aliou Kourouma, said the original plan was for Diaka and her friends to travel to Coney Island, which he thought was too far away from their Bronx home.

Kourouma was in Africa, visiting relatives in Guinea when he got the request from his daughter.

“I tell her ‘Hey, Diaka, it’s scary. You and who?’” Kourouma, 30, said. “”I tell her ‘call me.’ So she called me by FaceTime. We talked. I explained to her a little bit. ‘Why you want to go, I don’t like it.’ She said, ‘’It’s a beautiful day, I want to go with friends,’ and she gave me three names. I said ‘Okay, Diaka, be careful.’”

He said he did not know when or why the plans changed from Coney Island to the Rockaways. Kourouma also said Diaka promised not to go in water above her hips.

But Diaka and her friends soon got in over their heads.

Nabintou, 17, another friend, said she ran for help.

“I went to go call for a lifeguard” she said. “There was not a single lifeguard there. I ran, I said ‘We need help, somebody, lifeguard, lifeguard.’ And we all came and we all tried to help and grab as many people as we could.”

But they couldn’t find Diaka.

“They were able to take me and my other friend but she [Diaka] was too far,” Mariame said. “We called everybody, because we thought she went to the bathroom. They said she wasn’t in the bathroom so then we called the police.”

She said it took first responders another 20 minutes to find their friend in the water.

The girls said there were big waves in the ocean at the time and a current pulling them towards the open water. Four friends were in the water together when Diaka drowned, though more of them came to the beach. They said they could swim but the waves were big.

“I know how to swim,” Soumah said. “I took swimming lessons.”

Diaka’s friends said the lifeguards were murky about the rules.

“It was a lot of people there,” Nabintou said. “Like hundreds of people. If the beach closes at 6, then why didn’t somebody come and tell us to leave the park?”

Nabintou and others who were on the beach gathered with Diaka’s father on Sunday at a mosque in the Bronx. They said prayers and traded memories about a girl who was looking forward to the 12th grade.

“You could catch her always smiling, always laughing and happy.” Nabintou said.

“She was a good person,” Soumah added. “No dull moment with her.”

It took Kourouma two days to get home from Guinea.

“We were very very close. We talked a lot,” Kourouma said. “We talk every day. She’s my princess.”