The parents of a boy who nearly drowned during a school camp just minutes before another student tragically died are suing the state government and an aquatic center.
The son of Brad and Pearl Sutton, who cannot be named, nearly drowned while at Belfast Aquatics in Port Fairy in south-west Victoria during a trip organized by Merrivale Primary School in Warrnambool.
They claim their eight-year-old son struggled to stay afloat in the water after jumping off the inflatable set up in the deepest part.
“He couldn’t keep his arms out of the water, all you could see were his hands sticking out.” Sutton told the Herald Sun.
The parents of a boy who nearly drowned during a school camp just minutes before another student tragically died are suing the state government and an aquatic center.
The harrowing incident occurred just five minutes before sophomore Cooper Onyett (pictured) drowned during the same school camp.
“He was underwater for a long time, he thought he was going to die that day.”
Sutton said her son’s glasses quickly began to fill with water and he couldn’t keep his head up.
“I was trying to hold on to the inflatable, but it was so slippery I couldn’t get a hold of it,” Sutton remembers his son saying.
A woman swimming at the opposite end of the pool saw the boy struggling in the water.
He immediately alerted teachers and nearby staff, who quickly helped the boy out of the pool.
Mr Sutton explained that the school required parents to complete a permission form detailing their child’s swimming skills. In this form, he clearly stated that his son did not know how to swim.
According to legal documents lodged with the Supreme Court, Mr and Mrs Sutton are suing the Victorian Government and the Port Fairy Community Pool Management Group, which runs Belfast Aquatics, for negligence.
The parents intend to seek damages and other costs as a result of the incident.
Sutton said she hopes this will prevent other families from facing a similar situation.
The harrowing incident occurred just five minutes before sophomore Cooper Onyett drowned during the same school camp.
The Department for Education pleaded guilty to a WorkSafe charge for “failing to ensure that… people were not exposed to risks” after the boy died at the school camp.
The swimming center reportedly pleaded guilty to charges brought by WorkSafe last Wednesday.
Last Thursday, Warrnambool County Court heard the school sent parents permission slips and medical forms before the trip, asking them how far their children could swim.
Cooper’s mother, Skye, ticked a box confirming he was a beginner swimmer with little or no experience in shallow water, prosecutor Duncan Chisholm told the court.
However, the school never passed information about the students’ swimming skills to the pool before sending 28 young students there.
Second graders were asked to raise their hands if they knew how to swim when they arrived at the aquatic center, Chisholm said.
Children who said they could swim were led to an inflatable obstacle course at the deep end of the pool, however many were eventually identified as weak swimmers and helped to the shallow end, he said.
Cooper was among the children identified as a weak swimmer and was seen twice more outside the shallow area, jumping to the bottom and onto the inflatable, which he was told to get off.
A swimmer who was with her daughter later saw the boy floating underwater and at first thought he was holding his breath.
Cooper (left) is pictured with his mother Skye Meinen.
“After about 40 seconds, he realized something wasn’t right,” Chisholm said.
Cooper died after attempts to resuscitate him in the pool failed.
Victoria’s education department pleaded guilty to breaching health and safety legislation over Cooper’s death, admitting it failed to ensure people other than employees were not exposed to risks.
“If information about the children’s swimming skills had been communicated to Belfast, this could have reduced the risk of drowning,” Mr Chisholm said.
Throughout last Thursday’s plea hearing, Judge Claire Quin repeatedly asked government lawyer Carmen Currie why the school was collecting information about the children’s swimming ability if not to disclose it to the pool.
Currie said the information was collected for planning purposes and that the department could not “anticipate in each case the exact information a provider might need” for a school activity.
It was up to the pool to ask for the information, the lawyer said.
“The activity was swimming,” Judge Quin said.
‘Why get the information if you’re not going to give it to the people who need it?’
Chisholm said the department was relying on someone else to fulfill its own obligation when it assigned the aquatic center the responsibility of asking about students’ swimming abilities.
“When they drop kids off, they don’t just pull them off the bus and say, ‘You’ll be right,'” he said.
Currie said the department has since made it mandatory for schools to inform pools about their students’ swimming skills.
However, he said there was no evidence that revealing the children’s swimming skills would have changed the way Belfast Aquatics managed the activity on May 21.
Port Fairy Community Pool Management has also admitted breaching health and safety legislation.
Judge Quin is expected to sentence both the department and the pool management on May 31.