By Anne Marie Kilday, Mike Glenn
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2007 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
HOUSTON — With five child drownings since Saturday - and Tuesday’s near-drowning of a 2-year-old boy - Houston police, fire and Child Protective Services officials warned parents to carefully supervise their children.
“The main thing we want to convey to folks is that if you want to save children, you have to be able to see them,” said Estella Olguin, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services.
CPS is investigating two of the five recent drownings.
The 2-year-old boy who nearly drowned Tuesday was one of six children being supervised by a 15-year-old girl at a home in northwest Harris County. The toddler was found in a swimming pool in the 7900 block of Huddersfield Court.
Emergency workers “initially found a faint pulse” and took the child to a hospital, Harris County sheriff’s spokesman Lt. John Martin said, adding that the child’s twin also was being cared for at the home.
Martin said two other children, 8 and 10, spotted the child in the pool and pulled him out. “The 15-year-old called 911,” he said. The house has two separate stairways, Martin said.
The toddler told the baby-sitter he wanted something to drink. “As the 15-year-old was coming up one staircase, the 2-year-old was going down the other,” he said, and the child “somehow got out a back door and fell into the pool.”
Martin said investigators will be talking to CPS officials and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. “It doesn’t appear that she wasn’t paying attention. You can’t be everywhere all the time,” he said.
Ten area children have drowned so far this year, Olguin said.
A common denominator in all of those accidents was that children were not closely supervised by a parent or child care provider, Olguin said.
The recent drownings included two - a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old - who died Monday in separate incidents. CPS is investigating those cases, Olguin said. Over the weekend, a Missouri City brother and sister drowned in Oyster Creek after they wandered away from their family’s new home Friday. Their bodies were found Saturday. On Sunday, a 10-year-old Houston boy wading in the waters near San Luis Pass drowned after stepping into a deep hole.
Last year, 27 area children drowned in swimming pools, lakes, ponds or rivers. At this time last year, 14 area children had drowned, Olguin said.
Houston Fire Department Assistant Chief Omero Longoria and Houston Police Department spokeswoman Johanna Abad joined Olguin in kicking off the third year of Project See and Save.