A 4 year old girl drowned at the Grand Seas Resort near Daytona Beach, Florida. On June 2, 2016 Hailey R. Stanley of Macon, Georgia was on vacation with family spending time at the resort pool when another hotel guest spotted her at the bottom. That guest jumped in to rescue her and other guests immediately began administering CPR. Fire crews arrived shortly after 12:10 p.m. and continued CPR while rushing the toddler to Florida Hospital Oceanside, in Ormond Beach where the young girl was pronounced dead.
A police incident report indicates that the young girl was in the care of her 28 year old cousin. The toddler was last seen in the kiddie pool, but at some point she wandered over to a slide that slid down into a deeper section of the pool where the girl was seen motionless at the bottom. It is not clear from media reports whether a lifeguard was on duty for the resort at the time.
Florida leads the nation with the highest rate of drowning deaths of children between the ages of 1 and 4. A tragic trend in child drownings, known as the “everyone is watching, no one is watching” situation occurs when pools are crowded and caretakers assume that eyes are everywhere. Most drownings do not begin with the victim screaming and splashing. The distress often begins underwater where no one can hear or see that a child is in danger until it is too late.
