Boy, 5, drowned at water park ‘after parents left him alone for two hours’
‘Completely unsupervised’
A BOY of five drowned at a water park after his mother and stepfather left him unsupervised near a lagoon for two hours, a court heard yesterday.
Charlie Dunn, who could not swim, was pulled from a pool by other children.
This was just after his stepfather Paul Smith had been heard saying ‘For ****’s sake, we’re ready to go. I don’t know where he ******* is’ as he smoked a cigarette.
Prosecutor Mary Prior QC said the 5ft- deep children’s pool at Bosworth Water Park in Leicestershire was known as how the its Blue depth Lagoon. increases She described quickly away from the shoreline.
Smith and Charlie’s mother, Lynsey Dunn, were seen standing by the boot of their car as Charlie – who they said was ‘terrified’ of water – played in the pool without armbands, a court heard.
Mrs Prior said: ‘ We know that Charlie could not swim, he did not
have family time knew he any where did died armbands, own he neither was. some, of although his and parents at the the
‘This is not a case where Charlie had run off. Charlie had been permitted to go off by himself. Charlie died because he was not supervised by an adult.
‘He was left alone in a busy park at five years old in circumstances where there was a clear and obvious risk that he might come to very serious harm leading to his death.’ Birmingham Crown Court heard that on the day of Charlie’s death in July last year, he ended up being supervised by strangers at the water park. Mrs Prior also described a previous visit he made to the park with Smith and Dunn six weeks before he died. She told how one woman there was so concerned by the couple allowing Charlie to run unsupervised on a strip of land between the lagoon and a fishing lake that she told them ‘in no uncertain terms that she was not happy with what Charlie was doing’.
But the couple simply told her ‘he’d be all right’ before wandering off to the pedalos without telling the boy. The court heard Charlie eventually realised he was alone and ran off to catch up with them. Mrs Prior said Smith, 36, and Dunn, 28, often left the boy – who was described as having ‘no road sense whatsoever’ – to play in the street near his home unsupervised in the year before to the tragedy.
In one incident, when Charlie was four, a neighbour saw him going up a grass bank in his pedal car towards a main road that was on the other side. The neighbour just reached him before he went into the traffic.
In another incident, Charlie came ‘perilously close’ to straying on to a main road. At the time, Smith was rummaging through a skip for items to salvage.
Smith and Dunn, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, are accused of Charlie’s manslaughter through gross negligence.
Smith also denies attempting to intimidate a woman who reported seeing Charlie ‘completely unsupervised’ in the water at the park for ten minutes.
Mrs Prior said the defendants had displayed a ‘long-term indifference to supervising this little boy’, adding: ‘These parents owed a duty of care to Charlie. They breached that duty and as a result, Charlie died.’
She said Smith initially told police the couple had taken their eyes off Charlie for just minutes.
Mrs Prior said no one knew how Charlie drowned or why and added: ‘ They (the defendants) can’t tell you what happened when Charlie drowned because they were not looking after him.
‘They can’t help with the two hours before he drowned except for the odd minute when he came up to the car for a drink or a sandwich.’
She said this was not a case ‘about parents turning their back for a moment whilst a tragedy occurs’, but rather a gross failure to supervise ‘ for protracted periods of time’.
The trial continues.