Mo. boy, 2, drowns in wading pool

DE SOTO, Mo. (AP) -- A 2-year-old eastern Missouri boy drowned in a wading pool despite a frantic effort to save him, authorities said.

The child's uncle, Todd Dudgeon, and his wife were baby-sitting Philipp Cruz on Monday when Dudgeon heard his wife screaming in the backyard, where the child was playing in a wading pool filled with about 18 inches of water.

Several other children and an adult were also present, said Sgt. Gary Higginbotham of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. Authorities said the boy was wearing a flotation device.

Dudgeon came running and found Philipp face-down in the pool.

"I started giving him CPR," Dudgeon said. "I really thought we had him."

The boy was taken to St. Louis Children's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead Tuesday morning.

"All the precautions were taken," Higginbotham said. "It all happened in a very short period of time, but it doesn't take long. It's one of those situations where bad things happen to good people."

A child can drown in a matter of moments and in just inches of water, said Dr. Jose Pineda of St. Louis Children's Hospital.

"The heart is more resilient than the brain when it comes to oxygen deprivation, but when the heart actually stops, that usually means enough time has passed to produce irreversible brain damage and children often end up dying," he said.

The only way to prevent a drowning is to have continuous, uninterrupted supervision, Pineda said.

"They can fall in the water, get scared, have a reflex spasm of their airway, hurt their head on the way down," he said. "Even with a life jacket, a child can slip and the only way to prevent an unfortunate accident like this is you cannot take your eyes off of children for a minute because that's all it takes."

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com