Sad news from Trumbull: Missing two year old found dead. Apparently drowned in river. http://bit.ly/dkzky5 RT @WTNH
Two hours before:
Trumbull and Bridgeport are working a report of a two year old in the river between the two towns per PD Hotline
Missing Two Year Old Found Dead
Trumbull, Conn. (WTNH) - A two year old from Trumbull has drowned after falling into the Pequonnock River.
The child was reported missing from
their Lindberg Drive home this morning. Fears that the child had
fallen into the swollen river turned out to be true. Dive teams were quickly assembled and combed the waters, but it was too late.
The child's body was found at Bunnell's Pond at Beardsley Park in Bridgeport. The park has been closed as police continue their investigation.
The child's name has not been released.
Updates will come as soon as I get them..
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It's the same pond that these four people died in back in 2007:
As Van Sank, a Cry for Help That Could Not Be Answered
“She yelled ‘Help!’ in the water,” Shadae said of the van’s driver, Michelle McIntosh, 39, who drowned along with her 2-year-old son and Shadae’s niece. The fourth victim, Ms. McIntosh’s 6-year-old nephew, died on Thursday afternoon at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
As relatives of Ms. McIntosh kneeled and prayed at the edge of the choppy waters of Bunnell’s Pond here in this city on Thursday afternoon, Shadae recounted the accident. Tire marks from the tragedy gouged the shoreline.
It was just after 10 a.m. Wednesday when they entered the park for a Fourth of July barbecue. There were two vehicles in tandem, each carrying four people and picnic supplies, when Ms. McIntosh left her van for a moment on a hilltop parking lot to ask Shadae’s mother, Loren Bartley, who was driving the second vehicle, where they should set up in the park.
A moment after Ms. McIntosh stepped out of the van, it began to roll forward, down the steep hillside, Shadae said. Ms. McIntosh jumped back inside.
“She put her whole body in and then she had one foot out of the car, trying to stop it,” Shadae said. “It kept rolling faster.” The van rolled into the pond as water rushed into its open door. A family member called 911.
The van briefly bobbed at the water’s surface, seconds before disappearing.
Shadae described how two relatives raced from the second car into the water and were joined by two onlookers. But no one could get to them; the water was too dark to see.
At a news conference on Thursday, Bryan T. Norwood, chief of the Bridgeport Police Department, said the 911 call came in at 10:41 a.m. Fire Department personnel and scuba divers responded immediately and brought the victims to the surface. The victims, all city residents, were taken to hospitals, where Ms. McIntosh, her son David Jr., 2, and Julia Boyd, 2, were pronounced dead on Wednesday. Jayden Wilson, Ms. McIntosh’s 6-year-old nephew, died the next day at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Chief Norwood said the 1999 Plymouth Voyager traveled 248 feet into the pond and became submerged in 15 feet of water. He said it was unclear whether the transmission had been put in park. A preliminary investigation showed that the engine was on, the emergency brake was not deployed and none of the seat belts were buckled.
One child’s car seat was on the rear passenger seat of the vehicle.
Asked whether one of the children had put the car in gear while Ms. McIntosh stepped outside, Chief Norwood said, “It is unclear at this point.”
In the hours after the accident, relatives clung to hope that Jayden Wilson, who had just completed his first year at a city magnet school, would survive.
“Just to see that his life was taken away so young, it’s hard to understand,” said Sophia Cooper, the boy’s aunt and Ms. McIntosh’s sister.
A financial aid adviser at Monroe College in New Rochelle, N.Y, Ms. McIntosh is survived by her husband, David, and their three daughters, 13, 10, and 5. The couple moved to Bridgeport several years ago from White Plains, N.Y.
Mayor John Fabrizi of Bridgeport said city officials would discuss possible safeguards for the area.
A clutch of silver balloons and two dozen plastic tulips were at the accident scene on Thursday. Some people gathered there to pray, and some left behind homemade cards.
Several described the pond as dangerous and cited a number of drownings there over the years.
Daniel Allen Hearn, a historian and author from Monroe, Conn., said in a phone interview on Thursday that 76 people had drowned at the pond since 1921, including the victims this week.
Angel Morales, 61, of Bridgeport, was among those who came to the pond on Thursday. He said two of his friends had died in the 1970s while swimming in Bunnell’s Pond.
“If there was a fence over here, it would save some people, save some lives,” he said.
Elizabeth Sierra, 34, said, “We just sit here wondering everything they must have gone through at that moment.”
One of the people kneeling at the water’s edge, Leonara Henry, 32, Julia Boyd’s aunt, scooped up water with her hands and let it run down her face.
“The water is not so clean,” she said, “but I just wanted to feel Julia one more time because I know her spirit is in there.”
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