TAMPA — Police pulled a boy from the bottom of a pool on Wednesday who is now in critical condition.
At about 11:27 a.m., police pulled the 9-year-old boy from the pool at the Ashford Place Apartments.
He was unconscious, and officers performed CPR until Fire Rescue arrived. He was taken to Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg.
Initially, TPD was unable to definitively identify the boy because they were trying to locate his family. After going door to door in the neighborhood, police learned the boy lives in an apartment at Ashford Place. TPD says the boy was left in the care of his grandfather while his mother was at work. The grandfather was in the apartment while he was out playing.
It is unclear at this time what caused the incident or how the 9-year-old accessed the pool area. One neighbor told ABC Action News she sees kids at both pools all the time by themselves and she believes they are too accessible to children.
"My neighbors kept asking me how do you feel 'cause you said this was going to happen? I'm so numb....I'm so numb 'cause it was a preventable accident. It didn't have to happen," Anita Rust said.
