Drowning destroys dream

A dream realized shimmers in Sandi Sullivan's backyard -- a swimming pool ringed by palm trees, a place she wanted to be so inviting that her three boys would want to stay home rather than take to the streets.

From her second-floor bedroom window, she can see the blue water sparkling in the blistering sunlight, the rainbow colors of the umbrella, the green palm fronds, the playhouse once filled with laughter.

It stands in stark contrast to the darkness she says now envelops her soul.

"I am so ashamed," she said, bowing her head, her hair draped over a stuffed animal she holds. "How could I have not made sure the pool was secure? I hate it when people say it wasn't my fault or my husband's fault. Of course it was our fault. We're supposed to protect our children and we didn't. I was always good at protecting my kids. I wish I had been smart. You cannot guard a pool with just your eyes. I was always looking out the window, but you can't be looking all the time."

Five months have passed since Sullivan's backyard dream pool, which didn't have a fence or an alarm system, turned into a nightmare.

On Feb. 16, 4-year-old Jaden Sullivan fell in the pool. He didn't know how to swim.

The rest of his immediate family -- his mother and father and two brothers -- were just a few feet away in the house.

Jaden was pronounced dead at Summerlin Hospital a week later. His heart had given out.

In hopes of preventing other child drownings, Jaden's mother called the Review-Journal to share her family's experience. Her call was prompted by a recent story about a similar tragedy that occurred the same day of Jaden's accident. Sixteen-month-old Logan Conrad drowned at the home of his grandmother, Darlene Conrad.

"I couldn't believe that a child drowned on the same day my son fell in the water," Sullivan, 36, said. "This is just too awful. I feel I have to warn people."

Darlene Conrad has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor failure to supervise charge. The boy's uncle, Sean Conrad, who was found to have marijuana, cocaine and a prescription pain reliever in his system, awaits trial on a felony charge of child abuse and neglect with substantial bodily harm. He fell asleep while caring for Logan, who crawled through the doggy door and fell in the home's fence-enclosed pool.

No charges were filed in Jaden's death.

Vicki Monroe, the chief deputy district attorney who handles child drownings, said each death is handled "on a fact intensive basis."

Monroe said the decision to prosecute has been guided by what the Nevada Supreme Court has defined as an accident. She recalled a drowning case in which parents initially had been charged with negligence after telling their youngster who wanted to go swimming they'd "be there in just a minute."

A district judge ruled the case could not be brought because the state couldn't show there was negligence. That decision was appealed to the state Supreme Court and upheld.

"They never intended for the child to go swimming," Monroe said. "It was just an accident."

Monroe said instances in which a child drowns while parents are engaged in routine activities and "nothing else is added to the mix" -- such as drugs -- are generally seen as accidents.

"That seems to be the message we've gotten from the Supreme Court," she said.

"It just isn't possible to know where your child is all the time. Parents know that. What do you do with someone who tells her child not to go into the street and then the mother gets distracted and the child runs into the street and gets hit?"

Sullivan wants people to know that, regardless of whether you're prosecuted, you'll never be the same.

"It happens so fast," she said. "And then for the rest of your life you may never know happiness. I don't know if I ever will."

Jaden's accident happened on just "a normal afternoon."

Her husband, Mike, and sons, Dakota, 10, Reno, 8, and Jaden were downstairs, at times going in and out of the house from the rear sliding door. There was laughter and "just messing around," Sullivan said. She went upstairs to take a shower.

She heard voices downstairs but wasn't sure if she heard Jaden's. Before stepping into the shower, she went to her bedroom window.

"I saw Jaden floating in the pool and screamed for Mike," she said, tears streaming down her face.

After running from the house and lifting his son out of the pool, Mike Sullivan performed CPR. He couldn't get a heartbeat. Paramedics responding to the family's 911 call couldn't keep Jaden from turning blue.

"I was so hysterical," Sullivan said. "I was just in a towel, and I kept yelling for my husband to make Jaden breathe. I can't believe he was in the pool for even a couple of minutes."

Doctors did get Jaden's heart started at the hospital, but they told his mother the prognosis wasn't good.

"They said he wouldn't be the same boy if he lived," Sullivan said. "At that point, I was just glad to have some time with him. I got to sneak into his bed with him and talk with him. He had so many tubes stuck in him, I really had to be careful."

In a paper he wrote for school, "A Sad Ending," Dakota remembered what his brother had been doing before the accident.

"He was trying to fill the splash ball with water, but he leaned over too far," Dakota wrote. "We didn't even hear a splash."

Mike Sullivan, who works for a utility company, doesn't want to talk about the death of his son.

"We grieve differently," Sandi Sullivan said. "It is very difficult for us."

The Sullivans moved into their home near Buffalo and Vegas drives in September.

"I got a job as a Realtor so I could find a way to get a house with a pool," Sullivan said. "I worked my butt off to make that dream come true for my family. Now I wish I had never done that."

The Sullivans purchased their home from an existing homeowner, so the pool did not have to meet safety requirements for new residential pools that largely became part of the Southern Nevada Pool Code in the last five years.

Owners of new homes with pools can select from one of five safety options. They can either install a barrier, often a 48 inch fence that isolates the dwelling from the pool with gates that are self-closing and latching; a power safety cover; an alarm installed on all doors with direct access to the pool; self-closing and self-latching devices installed on all doors with direct access to the pool; or a laser or light beam perimeter alarm.

"I had planned on getting a fence, but my husband said nothing would happen," Sullivan said. "But I can't blame him because if I really wanted it, I would have gotten it. I just wish that existing homes that are sold are also subject to the safety codes for pools. Then I definitely would have gotten a fence."

Ron Lynn, Clark County director of development services, said the Southern Nevada code for new residential pools has undoubtedly made pools safer. But he said a safety program on pre-existing pools -- Phoenix has such a program in place -- could help even more.

"We've discussed how to deal with pre-existing pools in the past, but we didn't come to a resolution," he said. "It's time to get a task force together and discuss this again."

Of the 26 drownings in Clark County in 2006, five involved children under the age of 10 in swimming pools, according to statistics compiled by the Clark County coroner's office. Statistics are not kept on whether the pools were equipped with safety devices.

Lynn said that regardless of what structural mechanisms are put in place, people can't rely on them alone.

"People are still the most important part of the equation," he said.

Sullivan agrees.

"We as parents have to make the right decisions," she said. "I can't believe I let a huge body of water go unprotected, yet I was a mother who locked the toilets so my children couldn't get in. What was wrong with me? What was I thinking? Why would I think it couldn't happen to us?"

To this day, she feels guilty for the pain suffered by her son. He had repeated seizures in the hospital.

"His body would stiffen up and shake all over every five to 10 minutes," she said. "It was terrible."

In the weeks immediately after Jaden's death, Sullivan would repeatedly have visions of her son motionless in the water. "It was driving me crazy day and night," she said.

The vivid nightmares have gone away, she said. But the guilt she feels seldom allows a full night's sleep.

"I keep wondering why I didn't protect Jaden," she said.

What has helped Sullivan cope are the heartfelt expressions of others, including those made by classmates of Dakota's from Katz Elementary School. They wrote letters of condolence.

One student said he wished he had known Dakota better. If he had, he said, then he could have been on hand to save Jaden. "I have a feeling of guilt in my stomach," the boy wrote.

A representative of Child Protective Services investigated what happened to see if the other Sullivan children were in danger, according to Ann Rubin, assistant director for the agency. The investigator found they weren't.

To date, no fence has been installed around the Sullivan's pool.

"We're going to do it," Sullivan said. "But both my other boys can swim."

Sullivan has been impressed with the way her sons have handled their brother's death. Reno, who loved to dance with Jaden, danced for family and friends after the funeral.

Dakota put together a book of his relatives' recollections of his brother.

"I loved chasing him on the beach in Mexico," Sandi Sullivan wrote of Jaden. "He would run into the waves, and then I would catch him under his arms and pull him back. He had the most intoxicating, genuine laugh I've ever heard. I would set him down and he would go right back into the ocean. That night as we slept on the ship, Jaden started laughing and laughing in his sleep. I lay there listening for some time. I knew he was chasing waves."