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BY ALICIA CRUZ
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
New Jersey police continue to investigate the accidental drowning of a two-year-old child in Union County Saturday afternoon.
Police say the little boy wandered away from his parents during a neighborhood block party, and was found unresponsive in the pool by a resident of the home. Paramedics transported the boy to Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth, where he died a short time later. The home is located in the 800 block of Elm Street in Roselle Park. Police have not filed charges, as the drowning appears to be accidental, ABC News reported.
Earlier this month, the body of Naisere Nelson was found near the Ocean Avenue Bridge in Avon. The 15-year-old was swimming with friends at Bradley Beach a week earlier when a rip current pulled him out to sea.
According to a 2011 Fact Sheet by the Children’s Safety Network (CSN) National Injury and Violence Prevention Resource Center, accidental drowning was the second leading cause of death for New Jersey children ages 1-4 followed by homicide for children ages 10-14 during 2003-2007.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows ten people die from unintentional drowning each day. Of those ten, two are children under age 14. Drowning is the sixth leading cause of unintentional injury or death amongst people of all ages, and children ages 1 to 4 have the highest drowning rates than any other age category.
The fatal drowning rate for African American children between 5 and 14 years-old is 3.1 times that of white children in the same age range. For American Indian and Alaskan Native children, the fatal drowning rate is 2.3 times higher than for white children.
The Center indicated that factors such as the physical environment and a combination of social and cultural issues are responsible for the racial differences in drowning rates. These rates were based on population, not participation. If based upon participation in water-related activities, the disparity in minorities drowning rates compared to whites would be much greater.
Supervision and proper barriers should be in place for children in any body of water, including bathtubs. Pool fencing is imperative to preventing small children from wandering into a pool area if a lapse of supervision occurs. Proper accoutrements such as four-sided isolation pool fencing could reduce the risk of childhood drowning by 83 percent.
Most drownings amongst children ages 1 to 4-years-old occur in residential swimming pools with the child out of sight less than five minutes, and in the care of one or both parents at the time, the CDC reported.
