A 22-month old boy is fighting for his life after drowning in an olympic-sized pool behind a Byram daycare facility.
Byram Police Chief David Errington said the daycare has been shut down since the drowning happened on Friday.
Errington said the child’s mother has asked that their names not be released.
The incident occurred shortly before 4 p.m. when Byram dispatch got a call of an unconscious child at Little Blessings daycare at 3275 Davis Road in Byram. The daycare worker that made the call didn’t mention the drowning, so ultimately the ambulance service and the fire service were dispatched to it as a medical call, but police were not.
“It was treated as a medical call because we only had information that it was an unconscious baby,” Errington said.
AMR gave daycare workers CPR instructions over the phone as ambulances and firefighters were en route to the scene. Finally Byram Fire arrived and took over medical care until AMR got there shortly behind them. The child was taken to University Children’s Hospital by ambulance.
Police were informed of the drowning around 11 p.m. Friday. Errington said the hospital called and requested a police supervisor, and a sergeant on duty went to get the report from the medical staff. They told police they were there because the child had drowned at the daycare. Errington explained that he would have liked for officers to have been involved much earlier, but nobody notified police it was anything other than an unconscious baby until the hospital called.
“This whole case has been tough on all of us, anytime you’ve got a child involved…” he said. “And it’s hard to work as it is.”
Errington said the child is still alive but is in very critical condition.
“There’s still a lot of investigating to do, we’ve got detectives still running down interviews, we’re still sorting through crime scene photos,” he said.
The pool behind the daycare is left over from the days 20 years ago when the building was a fitness facility, and it has a fence around it. Errington said there are questions about the security of the fence, however.
The State Department of Health’s Childcare Facilities Licensure Department has temporarily closed the daycare in every capacity until further notice.
Errington asked for prayers for the child’s mother in addition to the first responders who worked the call.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions that we have, as well as the child’s mother,” Errington said. “She’s a single mom and this is her only child.”
Errington said police are looking at every angle of the case.
“We’re just asking for patience until we can get all our facts and evidence together,” he said.
