So this is what I was telling you guys about on Monday. I took out the name of the street we live on. It was only 4 houses down from me.
"Austin Archer liked helping his mommy and daddy.
Monday evening, the 2-year-old and his parents were busy weeding the garden in their Northampton back yard when Austin's baby brother started crying. Alisa Archer handed Austin the hose so he could water the plants while she went inside the house to change 3-month-old Logan's diaper. About the same time, a cable repairman had called James Archer inside the home because of problems with some cable boxes.
Over and over again, the Archers had preached to Austin about staying away from the pool when an adult wasn't around or when he wasn't dressed in his “floaties,” Alisa Archer said.
But in the moments that passed while his parents were inside the house, Austin fell in to the pool and drowned. The mother suspects Austin tried to untangle the garden hose because it had gotten tangled with the hose for the pool's cleaning machine.
A tearful Alisa Archer said she hoped her family's tragedy would prevent another child from drowning.
“We talked to him over and over and over again about pool safety, but you cannot, cannot, cannot — for any reason whatsoever — leave a child unattended,” she said from her [NAME OF STREET] home Tuesday night.
“It doesn't matter how much you have taught them about safety. It just takes a matter of a second and then your life as you know it is over.”
Austin's death was ruled an accidental drowning by Bucks County Coroner Dr. Joseph Campbell after an autopsy Tuesday afternoon.
“It's one of those things that happen in a split second and you carry it for the rest of your life,” Northampton police Chief M. Barry Pilla Jr. said of the tragedy.
James Archer retrieved his son from the bottom of the pool and started to perform CPR. Alisa Archer said she ran to get her cell phone because the landline telephone had been taken out of service during the cable repair.
Frantic to reach emergency services, Alisa said she accidentally dialed 4-1-1 before dialing 9-1-1.
“I gave my husband the phone because the call was from a cell phone and [the 9-1-1 operator] didn't know where we were,” she said. Police received the call at 5:38 p.m., according to Pilla.
While her husband was on the phone, Alisha Archer tried to perform CPR on her child. She sent the cable repairman to get a neighbor who knew CPR better.
“I started giving him CPR and I thought it was working ... he started throwing up [water],” she said before bursting into tears. “I brought him into the house because I was afraid I was hurting him. I was scratching his little head on the cement.”
Alisa said she brought her son into the family room, which is where police found him when they arrived on scene. The neighbor was with Alisa performing CPR when the police arrived.
The Tri-Hampton Rescue Squad transported the boy to St. Mary Medical Center in Middletown, where he was pronounced dead about 6:20 p.m.
Alisa remembered her boy as someone who was full of life and energy.
“When you see his picture, you'll see in his eyes what a precious child he was,” she said of the boy who would have turned 3 in July. “No parent deserves a child as good as he was. You couldn't ask for a better baby.”
Mourners could be seen on the front porch of the house where the child lived with his parents and older siblings. A neighbor said she and other residents on the block had offered their condolences to the family, as well as their support.
Each year, about 300 children under the age of 5 drown in swimming pools, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
In a study of drowning accidents involving children under 5 in Arizona, California and Florida, the commission found two-thirds of those victims to be between 1 and 3 years old and 65 percent of the victims were boys.
“At the time of the incidents, most victims were being supervised by one or both parents,” the commission reported in its study. Additionally, 65 percent of the victims drowned in a pool owned by their family and 33 percent were in a pool owned by a family friend or relative, the commission reported."
So very sad.
"How bout a little black dress?"~hannahshule
"I have a penis, not a vagina." ~munkustrap178
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