14-year-old boy drowns in central Las Vegas swimming pool

Las Vegas police are investigating a 14-year-old boy’s drowning in a central valley residential swimming pool.

The incident happened about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday on the 4200 block of Nolan Lane, near Alta Drive and Valley View Boulevard, Metropolitan Police Department Lt. P. Spencer said.

The boy was unconscious and not breathing when he was pulled out of the water, police said. He was rushed to University Medical Center’s pediatrics unit, where he died.

It’s unclear whether an adult was supervising the boy. Metro abuse and neglect detectives are investigating, which is standard in such cases.

The Clark County coroner’s office identified the victim Wednesday as Edson Flores of Las Vegas.

A neighbor and friend, Gerald “Junior” Dencklau, 13, said Flores was a Hyde Park Middle School student.

“Sometimes we’d ride around on bikes and stuff or we would just talk,” Dencklau said late Tuesday, standing in his family’s nearby driveway. “If he was outside, I was outside.

Dencklau, who said he had never lost a friend before, said Flores “liked working on cars.”

“He always talked about buying a car, and modifying it and stuff, when he was 16,” he said.

In 2016, 28 people drowned in Clark County, according to the county coroner’s office. Nine of those deaths were children. The coroner’s office said that six people have drowned in Clark County in 2017, but numbers could rise as pending autopsy results are finalized.

Alejandro Rodriguez of Fontana, California, died Saturday at Lake Mead. His death has been ruled a drowning by the coroner’s office.

Two near drownings also were reported in recent days. A preschool age child was hospitalized Tuesday evening after an accident at a residential pool in the northwest Las Vegas Valley. On Sunday evening, an 8-year-old almost drowned at the Cowabunga Bay water park in Henderson.

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Rachel Hershkovitz contributed to this article.