Father: A fence may have prevented 9-year-old’s death
Columbus has no ordinance that would require fencing and locking gates for retention ponds
Gabriel Harber took his eyes off his daughter for just a few minutes in order to use the bathroom, but that’s all it took for the girl to escape their apartment on Columbus’ Southeast Side.
Harber told The Dispatch that he soon discovered that 9-year-old Marcomplex
Leah, who is intellectually disabled, was nowhere to be found after she somehow broke an additional locking mechanism he had installed on the apartment’s back door to keep her from wandering.
As he drove around the apartment
looking for her, Harber frantically called 911 shortly after 4 p.m. Sunday, explaining to a Columbus police dispatcher that his daughter had run off.
Marleah had a rare genetic condition – deformed epidermal autoregulatory factor 1, known more simply as DEAF1 – that caused a severe intellectual disability. She was unlikely to even respond to her name, her father said.
Harber, 34, shared the apartment on
the 3900 block of Bogdon Drive with his girlfriend and his two daughters from a previous marriage – Marleah and an older girl. But no one else was home at the time. As a result, the dispatcher implored Harber to give up his search so he could meet police when they arrived.
“I know you said I had to stay there, but I physically can’t stay there,” Harber said in a second 911 call. He eventually relented when the dispatcher said police would need him to be at the apartment to provide an article of Marleah’s clothing for a K9 dog to use to help pick up her scent.
But it didn’t matter. Shortly after 4:40 p.m., police found Marleah floating face down, unresponsive in a retention pond in the center of the apartment complex. Police and Columbus Fire medics attempted life-saving efforts, and Marleah was rushed to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where she died after 5:30 p.m.
Marleah’s drowning death in a retention pond at an apartment complex is the latest such drowning involving a child in the Columbus area.
Although signs are posted prohibiting swimming and skating at the retention pond at The Cove apartment complex – located north of Shannon Road and west of Brice Road – there is no fencing that would have impeded Marleah. A similar lack of fencing is prevalent around most detention ponds in apartment and residential housing developments.
Columbus city code requires fencing and locking gates for public and private pools. But no such ordinance exists for retention ponds, an artificial basin generally intended to manage stormwater runoff and prevent flooding.
Harber told The Dispatch he is convinced that if there had been a fence around the pond, it could have saved his daughter’s life.
“I think it absolutely would have made a difference if there was fencing around the retention pond,” Harber said. “It would just make sense to have it around other bodies of water as well, especially when you have people packed close together in an apartment complex.”
The Dispatch asked Amy Zobrist, a spokesperson for Midwest Apartment Management Company, which owns The Cove, whether the apartment complex would install a fence around the pond in the wake of the tragedy.
“As always it is our top priority to provide a clean and safe environment for our residents,” Zobrist said. “We have and will continue to search for ways to reach that goal.”
Occurrences of drownings in apartment retention ponds are not common in Columbus and central Ohio, but tragedies have happened.
Last July, a 4-year-old boy drowned in a pond at the Mallards Landing apartment complex in the Northland area.
Almost a year prior in 2019, a sports utility vehicle plunged into a pond at a Southeast Side apartment complex, leading to the deaths of two people, including an 11-year-old boy.
The driver was attempting to park the SUV on Shore Boulevard West, which runs along the pond of the Hartford on the Lake apartment complex on the Southeast Side, when she lost control, ran over the curb and drove across a short patch of grass and through a chicken wire fence into the water.
The driver was able to escape the vehicle on her own, and a passerby rescued two other boys, ages 7 and 9. But a 55-year-old and an 11-year-old child who were in the vehilce died a short time later.
At least six other people had died in the pond since 2011 at the complex, located off Kingsland Avenue and Hamilton Road, The Dispatch reported at the time. Four of those deaths involved vehicles entering the water, prompting residents at the complex to long demand that management construct a more substantial fence or barrier.
Despite such outcry, no legal requirement yet exists in Columbus for fences and barriers to be constructed around retention ponds.
This differs from the regulations governing in-ground pools that require fences if they are at least two-feet deep. The Columbus Department of Building and Zoning mandates that all swimming pools be surrounded by a minimum 4-foot fence and include outwardopening gates that self-close and selflatch, among other requirements.
Tony Celebrezze, assistant director of the city Department of Building and Zoning, didn’t have an answer for the discrepancy between requirements for pools and retention ponds, and could only speculate.
“A pool is typically going to be in a neighborhood where there are most likely kids running around,” Celebrezze said. “A lot of retention ponds are in apartment complexes or office complexes, and the likelihood of children being there unsupervised is a lot less.”
The city Public Utilities Department oversees the construction of retention ponds and basins, ensuring that they are in compliance with both the Ohio Building Code and the Residential Code of Ohio, said George Zonders, city Public Utilities spokesman. This means that pond proposals are evaluated for their ability to capture and control stormwater runoff and are designed to account for the amount of natural drainage lost when flat, impervious surfaces like roofs and parking lots are built on previously natural land.
“Responsibility for the property – including the pond – belongs to the property owner,” Zonders said in an email. “Our stormwater rules don’t include requirements for fencing, just measures that will help ensure the pond does its job of capturing stormwater.”
Columbus and Franklin County have upgraded regulations in the past decade on how steep and how deep retention ponds can be, but fences were not added.
Advocates for the multi-family housing industry say that in addition to the state and city laws they follow, industry standards and best practices also exist to guide the safety measures management companies implement.
“This is a tragic situation,” Jon Melchi, executive director of the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio, said of Marleah’s drowning in a written statement provided to The Dispatch. “The guidelines for retention ponds and all associated safety measures are dictated by local jurisdictions in conjunction with specifications outlined by the Ohio EPA. Our industry has always worked proactively to meet the requirements and standards set forth by local governments and the state.”
Fencing may make sense for some communities, but in other places it may serve as an obstructive barrier for servicing the pond, said Dimitri Hatzifotinos, an attorney for the Columbus Apartment Association, which provides legislative, education, and networking services for members companies who own or manage multifamily communities and the companies that service the apartment industry.
“I’m not sure I can speak on behalf off all apartment communities, because each one is unique,” Hatzifotinos said. “The better practice is to make sure lease holders (residents) are aware of their responsibilities.”
Harber said he and his family are planning to soon leave their apartment – plans that were in the works well before Marleah’s death.
Asked to provide a photo of him with his daughter, Harber declined, saying it would unfairly leave out too many people who she loved – and who loved her. Instead, the photo he asked to be published was of a singular Marleah as he will remember her – eyes filled with light, smile brimming across her face.
“She was always smiling and joyful,” Harber said. “She brought out the best with everyone who interacted with her, always.”
As Marleah’s family plans funeral arrangements, they’ve organized a Gofundme page to raise money to help with expenses.
Eric Lagatta is a reporter at the Columbus Dispatch covering public safety, breaking news and social justice issues. Reach him at elagatta@dispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ericlagatta
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