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Toddler wanders off and drownsBy ANGELA MOORE © St. Petersburg Times, published April 2, 2001 TAMPA -- At almost the same time Sunday on opposite ends of Hillsborough County, two 1-year-old boys struggled to breathe with water-filled lungs after falling into backyard pools. One of them survived. One didn't. Drowning is the leading cause of death in Florida for children ages 1 to 4, with 70 to 80 dying each year. Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Debbie Carter said she wasn't sure if Sunday marked the first child drowning of the year. Kaleb Ramnath died at Brandon Regional Hospital about 3:30 p.m. Sunday after he was found face-down in a small plastic wading pool in his grandmother's back yard. The 20-month-old was with his parents visiting his grandmother, Sharina Ramnath, at her home at 318 Sacramento St. in Valrico. At some point, the adults realized that Kaleb had wandered off and was nowhere in the home, so they immediately called 911. No one looked inside the wading pool. Within five minutes of the call, Carter said, a deputy arrived and found Kaleb. He was taken to Brandon Regional where he was pronounced dead a short time later. About the same time in Town 'N Country, 18-month-old Zachary Steinig wandered out the back door of his home at 7512 Barry Road. A few minutes later, the boy's mother, Kathy Steinig, found him floating in the spa area of the family's in-ground pool, which is enclosed by a screen. Zachary was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was in critical condition in the pediatric intensive care unit Sunday night. Because of the unusually high number of child drownings in Florida, the state Legislature passed a law last session requiring that all pools installed after Oct. 1, 2000, come equipped with at least a 4-foot barrier on all sides, self-locking gates, a pool cover or alarms at pool entrances. The law exempts above-ground pools and the estimated 1-million residential pools already existing in the state. About 23,000 new pools are built or installed every year.
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