Headline Surfer® graphic / ORMOND BEACH -- The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the circumstances that led to a 3-year-old boy's drowning death in a backyard swimming pool near Ormond Beach on Tuesday afternoon.
Deputies were dispatched to a home on Rodeo Acres Drive after receiving a 911 call at 3:45 p.m. The toddler was identified as David Airhart. The father and an older sibling were home at the time, according to a Sheriff's incident report.
"Based on preliminary information, investigators believe the child had been missing for at least 15 minutes before he was found in the water," Sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson told Headline Surfer®. "When deputies and paramedics arrived, the stepfather had the child out of the pool and was trying to resuscitate him. Paramedics took over CPR efforts and transported the child by ambulance to Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center in Ormond Beach. The child was pronounced dead at the hospital."
"Based on preliminary information, investigators believe the child had been missing for at least 15 minutes before he was found in the water," Sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson told Headline Surfer®. "When deputies and paramedics arrived, the stepfather had the child out of the pool and was trying to resuscitate him. Paramedics took over CPR efforts and transported the child by ambulance to Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center in Ormond Beach. The child was pronounced dead at the hospital."
Eight small children drowned in swimming pools in Volusia County in 2011, one of the deadliest years on record. Links are provided below for that story and more recent child drownings.
Short Bio
Henry Frederick is publisher of Headline Surfer®, the award-winning 24/7 internet news outlet covering the Daytona Beach-Sanford-Orlando metro area via HeadlineSurfer.com since 2008. A longtime cops & courts reporter focused on breaking news & investigative reporting, Frederick is among the Sunshine State's most prolific daily news reporters, having amassed close to a hundred award-winning byline stories narly eveenly split in print and digital platforms. Frederick earned his Master of Arts in New Media Journalism with academic honors from Full Sail University in Winter Park in February 2019. He was a metro reporter with the Daytona Beach News-Journal for nearly a decade and then served as a city editor for the Taunton Daily Gazette in Taunton, Mass, while maintaining a residence in Central Florida. Prior to moving to Florida, Frederick was a metro reporter for the Rockland Journal-News in Wst Nyack, NY, for seven years. Headline Surfer was named the Sunshine State's top internet news site by the Florida Press Club in 2018.