Pond where child died ‘should be filled in’

AN UNPROTECTED caravan park pond in which a toddler drowned should be filled in, a coroner stated yesterday.

Cork’s city coroner, Dr Myra Cullinane, made the recommendation after an inquest into the death last summer of two-year-old Glen McNamara Twomey.

Dr Cullinane said that the pond should be filled in as recommended by health and safety experts consulted by the park’s owner Dan Dorian.

“I recommend the removal of this hazardous attraction as previously recommended,” she said.

The inquest heard that Glen, from Hollyhill on the city’s northside, wandered off last July from outside his parents’ caravan at Seafield Caravan Park in Youghal, Co Cork, and drowned in a nearby pond.

There were emotional scenes in court. His distraught mother, Liz McNamara, recalled the tragic events of Saturday, July 8.

Liz told the inquest she drove her children, Amanda aged 12, Jordan, aged 10, and Glen, from their home in Hollyhill to the caravan park on July 7.

On Saturday, Liz got up with Glen while the other children slept.

Glen was playing for some time just outside the mobile home and popped his head around the door several times to joke with his mother.

But Liz broke down as she recalled how she noticed things had gone very quiet at around 10am.

She then began a frantic search of the caravan park and surrounding areas.

Caravan park neighbour, Annette Murphy, told the court she spotted Glen’s body floating face-up in the pond at about 10.40am.

She rushed into the water but sunk into deep muck and silt, less than three feet from the bank. “It was like quick-sand,” she said.

She stretched out to grab the little boy but couldn’t reach him.

“I screamed but there was no-one around,” she said.

Her father, Eddie Morey arrived on the scene within minutes. He also tried to wade in but he got stuck in the silt. He ran back to his van, tied a rope around his waist, gave it to an onlooker to hold, and slid into the water to retrieve Glen’s body, while Annette rang her sister Elaine Drummond’s caravan.

A trained nurse, Ms Drummond rushed back to the pond to find her father performing CPR on the little boy at the water’s edge.

“I turned the baby on his side. There was no pulse or breath. He was cold to touch and blue around the nose and lips. There were no signs of life,” she said.

It was at this moment that Glen’s mother arrived on the scene.

She knelt down beside her dying child, caressed his cheek and begged Ms Drummond not to stop CPR.

An ambulance was on the scene at 10.53am and Glen was brought under garda escort to Cork University Hospital (CUH).

Despite desperate attempts by doctors both en route to the hospital, and in accident and emergency, Glen was pronounced dead at 1.20pm. Assistant State pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster said death was caused by drowning.

Detective Garda Matt Fitzgerald said the little boy could have walked up to 400 adult paces to get to the pond. It was unprotected and up to 10 feet deep where the body was found.

Coroner Myra Cullinane recorded a verdict of accidental death and offered her deepest sympathies to the family.