ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Ill — A toddler drowned Wednesday morning in a pool at a Belleville home.
According to the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department, deputies responded to the 8100 block of Lunceford Lane in Belleville around 9:50 a.m. for a child found unresponsive in a backyard in-ground pool.
Deputies found a 23-month-old boy in the pool and family members were performing CPR, according to a press release from the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department. The toddler was transported to Memorial Hospital where he could not be revived and was pronounced dead.
The toddler was sleeping in a room with his mother and a grandmother was also at the house. The sheriff’s office said the mother woke up and could not find the toddler. The grandmother, who was in another room of the house did not see him either, according to the release. Both began looking inside and outside and the mother found him unconscious in the pool.
“While the Sheriff’s Department continues to investigate, preliminarily this incident appears to be a tragic accident where the child was able to exit the house on his own and make his way to the pool, which was not separated from the rest of the backyard and the house,” the sheriff’s department said in a release.
