The lifeless body of a 5-year-old child was freed in pain and misery from the brownish waters of his residential swimming pool in Repentigny by neighbors who rushed to his rescue after hearing his mother’s heart-rending screams on Sunday night.
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“I think I dived four times and the fourth time I found it. I had even tried to find it with the stick by going down but didn’t hit anything. When I took it out, I turned around so as not to see it,” said next-door neighbor Marcel Tousignant, 58, with a lump in his throat.
At around 4pm on Sunday, he and his neighbor Joe Pereira, 41, were alarmed by the heartbreaking screams and calls for help from the child’s mother, who was screaming outside her home.
Photo agency QMI, Thierry Laforce
Marcel Tousignant, 58, and Joe Pereira, 41, rushed to the rescue.
They immediately ran one after the other into the not yet open pool filled with leaves, in which the father of the 5-year-old child was already busy looking for him.
“The only things I touched were stones or toys. I couldn’t find the child, Mr. Pereira said, still shaken. I see him coming out of the pool with the kid. A police officer jumped into the water to pull him out. He didn’t move.”
critical condition
The lifeless boy was transported to Sainte-Justine hospital where he was still in critical condition as of Sunday night, Repentigny police spokesman Bruno Marier said.
Overall, he estimates the little one would have spent about twenty minutes underwater.
“It was hard to see. I kept saying we weren’t fast enough. My wife and I have our CPR class. If we could have gotten him out quicker we could have started resuscitation, Mr Pereira continued trembling. We did what we could. I have to get that in my head.”
According to the two neighbors, the swimming pool had a security fence.
However, according to her, the child could have climbed.
“I’m afraid to go to bed. It will be harder to get the image out of your head. If I close my eyes, the nightmare starts again,” added Mr Tousignant, imploring families to be careful.
Joe Pereira, father of two, rushed to call relatives to remind them to be careful this summer.
“We hear this on the news and we never think it could happen to us. If it’s right next door… That often happens for a while,” he breathed.
tragic weekend
Just the day before, a 4-year-old child died in Saint-Lambert after also being found in the family pool. A similar drama had been avoided in Lévis that morning.
Raynald Hawkins, executive director of the Lifesaving Society, estimates that 85% of children drown without adults knowing because the child had access to water without their knowledge.
“It’s a silent phenomenon, it’s not true that we hear the child screaming for help,” he told TVA Nouvelles.
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