Sheriff warns of dangers posed by swimming pools to children

Even as the summer vacation season winds down and schools welcome students back, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez warns the public in a tweet that swimming pools pose a danger to kids.

"Pools can be a dangerous place for kids. More children aged one to four drown than any other cause of death. It’s heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine what those parents go through. And what is most upsetting is that it can be prevented," he said, speaking about a recent tragedy.

"Summer fun in the pool turned tragic," he wrote. The Harris County Sheriff's Office and Atascocita Fire Department were called to a near-drowning at an apartment complex at 19780 Atascocita Shores Drive in the northeast Harris County community. "An adult was tending to multiple kids at the pool when a 1-year-old male toddler went underwater," Gonzalez said.

The child was given cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and briefly came to, he wrote in the tweet. "Lifeflight subsequently transported the boy to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. As of press time, the incident was under investigation."

“Our condolences go out to the family,” Gonzalez said.

The incident occurred more than a month after a North Texas boy fatally drowned in a pool at the Moody Gardens Hotel in Galveston on July 2. In that prior tragic incident, four-year-old Asher Rayburn of Paris died at the nearby University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) on July 2 after hotel guests retrieved him from the pool, according to a July 19 Houston Daily News report.

The child’s father, Matthew Rayburn, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Moody Gardens for negligence, seeking more than $1 million in damages, the newspaper reported.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states on its website that drowning is the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1-4 and is the second leading cause of death for children ages 5-14 just behind motor vehicle crashes, the paper said.