Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Boys die after being pulled from pool
NORTH LAUDERDALE – Two young boys who were pulled from a pool at a North Lauderdale apartment complex have died, their mother said.
“I lost my babies too early,” the mother said before sunrise Thursday at the Silver Palms community in the 1200 block of Southwest 50th Avenue. “If I was there, I could have saved them.”
The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the children as Branario Minto, 5, and Ja’Kye Joseph, 6. Autopsy examinations were being performed Thursday morning by the medical examiner’s office.
Passers-by found the boys unresponsive in the pool about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday at the apartment complex, which is
south of West Atlantic Boulevard, between South State Road 7 and Florida’s Turnpike.
They removed the children from the pool and called 911, the medical examiner’s office said.
The boys’ distraught and crying mother declined to provide her name Thursday, but showed reporters a photograph of her sons that was on her cellphone.
She said Branario and Ja’Kye were outdoors playing and she theorized that they jumped over the locked gate that surrounds the community pool.
“Those are my babies, those are my babies,” she said, indicating she has two other children.
Neighbors said some residents at the complex performed CPR. They were joined by deputies who were also trying to save the boys before North Lauderdale Fire Rescue paramedics arrived, Fire Chief Rodney Turpel said.
Paramedics took the boys to Northwest Medical Center in Margate, where the children died.
One of the boys was taking swimming lessons and thought he could swim but he couldn’t, his mother said.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office is investigating the deaths.
So far this year, 15 additional children in the state have died by drowning, and 10 of those deaths happened in swimming pools, according to the Florida Department of Children & Families. None of those tragedies happened in South Florida’s four counties.