2-year-old wanders after ducks, drowns

FORT LAUDERDALE — A 2-year-old boy who loved ducks wandered through a marina by himself after the fowl late Tuesday night. When the ducks dipped into the New River, so too did little Cormel Bullock — and he was found dead after a frantic search.

Surveillance video from neighboring boats at the Cooley Landing Marina in Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday evening show Cormel backing into the water after the ducks and getting down on his belly to push off from shore.

He then went down, only to be found about 75 minutes later when his body was spotted floating facedown in between boats at the marina.

Bullock’s aunt, DeAna’e Titus DeSadier, said the child lived about a quarter-mile from the marina. She said she got a call Tuesday night that Cormel was missing. By the time she got there, it was too late. On the docks, a neighboring resident tried CPR; so did police and paramedics, but Cormel was pronounced dead at the hospital.

“He loves the ducks,” DeSadier said Wednesday morning. She believes the child wandered from his nearby home. She said Cormel is familiar with the marina and the ducks around the New River and the Seventh Street Bridge area.

“Him and his mom, they always come out here,” DeSadier said.

The boy’s grandmother Deborah Titus, told WFOR-Ch. 4 that she was watching the child while Cormel’s mother was working. She said she went to use the restroom and that is when he must have slipped outside.

“I didn’t know he knew how to unlock the door,” Titus said.

A timestamp on the video indicates the toddler wandered into the water at 9:01 p.m. Police in Fort Lauderdale were called around 10 p.m. as his family and strangers scouted the area calling out Cormel’s name and using cellphones as flashlights to try to find him.

Edgar Caceres was on a boat celebrating Lawrence Ham’s birthday when he said a woman screamed a child’s name as she roamed through the area. She came up to Ham’s boat and asked whether anyone had seen a little boy about 2 or 3 years old.

Caceres hopped off the boat and jumped into his car, driving around the area, which is bordered by residential homes. A woman on the boat also got off to comfort the woman and help in the search on foot.

At a little past 10 p.m., Ham said a man with a dog approached the boat. He said the light on the man’s phone was pointed toward the dark water. Ham said he asked if everything was OK. “I’m not sure what that is in the water,” the man said.

Ham flicked on the side lights of his boat. They were stunned by what they saw.

The man with the dog reached down and pulled the child out. Another person reached into Cormel’s mouth to clear his airway and try to breathe life into him. The child’s mother arrived as people were doing CPR, Ham said.

Before 8 a.m. Wednesday, the mother was back at the marina at Slip 27. She dropped to her knees and began to cry, Ham said. A man, believed to be the boy’s father, who less than 12 hours earlier had been racing around calling out for Jesus to help him, let out a big cry and hugged Ham for trying to save the boy.