Six-year-old boy drowns in wave pool at Florida's Daytona Lagoon after father looked away briefly to attend to his younger child
DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA: A six-year-old boy who drowned on Saturday at Daytona Lagoon could not be saved despite the best efforts of paramedics, lifeguards, and a physician at the scene who administered CPR on the child after he was pulled out of the wave pool, but in vain.
Shortly before 1 pm on the fateful day, dispatch received several calls from guests at the water park located at 601 Earl Street, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.
Daytona Beach Fire Department spokeswoman Sasha Staton said the child could not be saved despite being worked on by paramedics en route to Halifax Health Medical Center.
Park manager Tyler Currie said the child was underwater when a lifeguard jumped in and helped pull him out of the pool, but was found to be unresponsive.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family right now,” he said.
The park released an official statement on their Facebook, saying the child's death was “a tragedy that leaves us all with heavy hearts.”
“We are grateful for the support of our trained lifeguards and teams of medical technicians on site," the statement read, “We are also fortunate that a guest, who was a doctor, also stepped up to assist alongside the team. We are completing a thorough review of the incident and cooperating with local authorities, as the safety of our guests is and remains a top priority.”
The boy, whose identity was not released, did not have a pulse after he was out of the water, the report states. Witnesses said a doctor at the scene helped lifeguards with chest compressions as they desperately waited for paramedics to arrive.
“They were working on him for a long time,” witness Colette Jeffrey, of Atlanta, recalled. “It was awful.”
The World Waterpark Association describes water-themed parks as “the safest place to have fun in the water” when compared to other bodies of water such as oceans, rivers, lakes, and even swimming pools.
In recent years, the number of water-themed parks have drastically increased.
There were roughly 1,300 water parks operating in North America in 2015, an increase of almost 30 percent from the previous decade, per a 2016 story from the Associated Press.
