The last thing Alan Webster remembers about Daniel Ha Min Byoun was that he was sitting poolside close to the 7-year-old boy.
Byoun wasn’t even in the pool. His family had started packing up, gathering toys and rounding up children so they could head home.
Seconds later however, Byoun was at the bottom of the pool. Webster told the AJC that a 12-year-old boy saw Byoun and began pulling him up toward the surface.
“He was yelling, ‘He’s drowning,’” Webster said. “At first I thought they were goofing around, but then I realized they weren’t, and I jumped in the water.”
Webster tried to administer CPR. Someone called 911.
The child died.
“It was so quick and so fast – I didn’t see him go in,” Webster said. “I’ve played it over in my head hundreds of times: Could I have seen him go in? Why didn’t I notice him?”
“I don’t know how you can watch anymore than you can that day,” Webster said. “You just feel, like, helpless when another child is lifeless and not responding to what you are doing. You feel helpless.”
The 7-year-old’s drowning death on June 14 was the first of two in community pools in Gwinnett County this month. There have been four near drownings in community pools in the county, including three this week.
"One is too many," Gwinnett County Fire spokesman Captain Tommy Rutledge told the AJC. "We're off to a busy summer season."
A young boy and a teenager nearly drowned in community pools in Gwinnett County on Wednesday.
The incidents were separate but happened within 20 minutes of each other.
The first incident happened around 10:40 a.m. at the Rivermist subdivision community pool in Lilburn, Rutledge said. A 16-year-old boy was participating in swim team exercises in the pool and blacked out, Rutledge said.
The teen's swim coach and the pool's lifeguard pulled him from the water. He began to breathe normally. Rescue crews came to the scene, but the teen was not taken to the hospital, Rutledge said.
About 20 minutes later, a 3-year-old boy was pulled from a community pool in Dacula, Rutledge said.
Rescue crews said the child was with his mother at the Hamilton Mill community pool Wednesday morning and “somehow made it from the kiddie pool to the adult pool undetected.”
Witnesses told the rescue workers that the child was down in the water for about a minute before he was pulled from the pool. A lifeguard performed CPR, and the boy was taken to the Gwinnett Medical Center for an evaluation.
On Sunday, a 4-year-old girl drowned in a pool at the Durant at Sugarloaf Apartments in Lawrenceville. She was taken to Gwinnett Medical Center and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The following day, a 14-year-old was pulled from a community pool in Lilburn. A lifeguard and Gwinnett County rescue crews were able to revive the teenager, who was not taken to the hospital.
Gwinnett County firefighters responded to 23 reports of near drownings in 2009. That included private pools, community pools as well as the Chattahoochee River, Rutledge said.
Rutledge encouraged people to review water-safety tips and to attend water-safety classes to prevent drowning accidents.
For his part, Webster said he keeps going over the basics with his own son, who's 12: Don’t run, don’t dive into the pool, no horse play. But he’s added a few things as well.
“He’s more aware of who’s in the pool, and where they are in the pool,” Webster said.
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