Boy's Drowning Spurs Pool Safety Awareness

By AmyJo Brown
Staff Writer

July 2002

he recent drowning of a 7-year-old Los Angeles boy, who lay undiscovered for two days at the bottom of a pool has brought increased public attention to issues of pool maintenance and water safety.

Police and the public were stunned to learn that a group of searchers, 10 adults and 20 children at a backyard pool party did not see the boy underwater and that a cloudy pool could create a false bottom.

The incident motivated area homeowners to examine their own activities, with some families hiring private lifeguards for their children’s backyard pool parties.

The boy, Paolo Ayala, was found under a ladder near the wall of the pool in the deep end only after a pool maintenance technician cleared the water with chemicals, Capt. Debra McCarty of the West Los Angeles police division told the Los Angeles Times. His hands and knees were covered in white silt.

Milky clouds had caused the bottom of the pool to appear smooth and white at the time of Paolo’s disappearance from his classmates’ pool party on June 5. Searchers combed the neighborhood with helicopters and search dogs.

After the body was found, searchers recalled that they had not been able to see the main drain when they peered into the pool’s depths. No one got into the pool to search.

Investigators who oversaw the search say they have learned something. “The rule from now on will be, if you can’t see the drain, you can’t see the bottom,” McCarty told the Times.

Disturbed that searchers overlooked a body in a pool, the public also reacted to news that the boy drowned with so many people around the pool.

“I’ve had an increase in requests for lifeguards,” said Don Harris, owner of Professional Aquatic Safety Services in Los Angeles. “Callers are saying, ‘I’d feel a lot better if I have a lifeguard.’ One guy was just going to have a water slide and a tank of water brought in for his kid’s party, but he wanted a lifeguard.”

Patty Kenmore, a director at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center in Pasadena, Calif., also has noticed an increased amount of interest in pool supervision. She received 12 calls from parents wanting lifeguards in the weeks after the incident when normally she only gets five inquiries a summer.

Cynthia Sun, an L.A. resident and a volunteer teacher at the Hathaway Family Resource Center, an organization that promotes literacy and offers parenting courses, also acted after hearing news of the boy’s drowning.

“With what happened to the 7-year-old boy, we started thinking, ‘What if it happened again?’ ” Sun said. “What if it happened locally with the children we work with? Many of the families who attend these programs are also day-care providers — and some of them have as many as 20 kids at one time and a pool in their backyard, and others take the kids to public pools.”

The boy’s parents have filed a lawsuit against the hosts of the party their son attended. They are seeking punitive and special damages, including compensation for emotional distress, loss of future income, and funeral and burial fees, according to the L.A. Times.

Three weeks after the Los Angeles incident, a similar tragedy occurred in New York. The body of a 14-year-old boy was found in a backyard pool on Long Island two days after disappearing.

Elbert Donell Hines Jr. drowned at a pool party, Suffolk County police told Newsday.

The water was so cloudy in the 16-by-32-foot, inground pool (a detective estimated visibility at 12 inches) that someone swimming the day after the disappearance said he may have bumped into the teenager without realizing it was him. Police did not initially search the pool because they were told that Donell had left the party.