A man wearing white shorts and black rosary beads drowned Sunday in the Salt River, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office reported.
The man in his 20s or 30s was pulled from the river near what is referred to as Sheep Crossing, according to the sheriff’s office.
Officers were working to identify the victim and determine the circumstances of his drowning.
ANTHEM, AZ – Strong storms in Anthem dumped enough water to overflow a wash and knock down a brick wall Tuesday night.
A woman, who asked only to be identified as Jeannette, said she was in her backyard when the brick wall collapsed.
“I actually went under water and was stuck under my hot tub,” she told ABC15.
Jeannette said she swam as hard as she could to the surface and hopped on a nearby fence until a neighbor helped rescue her.
Across Anthem, debris cluttered neighborhoods and roadways.
Landscaping crews expected to work overnight to clean up the mess.
GLENDALE, AZ – It takes just seconds to lose track of your kids around water. A lesson a quick-thinking neighbor learned first hand after saving a 1-year-old drowning victim.
That hero, Ray Espinoza of Glendale, was honored for his bravery.
“She’s like my baby, my baby,” recalls Espinoza.
He described the horrifying day on July 13th, when 1-year-old Nevaeh was found face down in the backyard swimming pool with no pulse and not breathing.
“So I grabbed her and started doing CPR,” Espinoza said.
Espinoza, now 28 years old, was certified in CPR as a teenager. He said his lifesaving skills quickly kicked in to help the little girl whose name is Heaven spelled backwards.
“I knew she was going to be okay,” Espinoza smiled.
He’s Nevaeh’s neighbor and was walking by the Glendale home several weeks ago when he heard the child’s grandmother desperately screaming for help.
“It was just like an angel,” said Nevaeh’s grandmother Catherine Bruce. “He just took her out of my hands and he started to work on her.”
As fate would have it, Espinoza’s father couldn’t drive him to work that day so he was walking to the bus stop.
“All I could is scream. Just uncontrollable scream,” Bruce said.
Espinoza continued performing CPR until fire and ambulance crews arrived to assist him.
By the time Nevaeh was rushed to Phoenix Children’s Hospital she was breathing on her own.
On Tuesday, Glendale Fire Department presented Espinoza with the Lifesaving Award for helping to save Nevaeh.
“I’m going to hang this up,” Espinoza said while holding his certificate. “I think this is going to help me move on in life more.”
An honor that rescue crews hope will teach others a life saving lesson.
“Make sure that you provide adult supervision any time a child is around water,” urged Glendale Fire Department’s Chris Dechant.
MESA, AZ – Authorities have identified a little boy who drowned in Mesa.
Mesa Fire Department spokesman Forrest Smith said the 4-year-old was found in a backyard pool near University Drive and Gilbert Road late Tuesday afternoon.
Mesa police say Cadan Huss Pickering was with his mother and great grandfather at the home.
CPR was being performed by Mesa police when fire crews arrived, Smith said. The boy was unresponsive enroute to the hospital.
The child was taken to Cardon Children’s Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
It was unknown how long the boy was in the water or how he was found.
Air15 video showed police putting up crime scene tape around a home with a pool that appeared to be green and murky.
Police say homicide detectives took over the investigation.
PHOENIX –
A 3-year-old girl is recovering after nearly drowning in an apartment complex swimming pool and she’s alive all thanks to the quick actions of her cousin.
Firefighters say the girl was in the pool area with her family near 40th Street and Indian School Road. She didn’t want to leave the pool, so she jumped in and tried to swim, but started to go under. That’s when her cousin, who is a lifeguard, went to save her.
“Don’t get a false sense of security when there’s a lot of people around the pool,” said Sgt. Marty Nickel of the Phoenix Police Department. “That’s when you lose track of the little ones.”
The child was taken to an area hospital and is expected to be okay.
No names were released in this case.
TUCSON – An angry mother is speaking out for the first time, after her 10 month old daughter drowned in her babysitter’s care.
Zada Davis told police she left Winter Azure in a bathtub unattended with the water running for about ten minutes.
The girl died six days later, becoming Pima County’s only child drowning this year.
Wednesday Davis pleaded not guilty to second degree murder.
Winter’s mother Kiari Holland sat in court and watched as Zada Davis pleaded not guilty to 2nd degree murder. A woman she thought she could trust.
Holland said she ran a background check and talked with friends who had also used the suspect as a sitter and thought that would be enough, but it wasn’t.
Holland said, “I figured it would go without saying for common sense, especially for a parent much less for anyone. You just don’t leave a child around water period.”
Its common sense that police said was missing for 10 minutes, leaving the little girl under water one minute, for every month she was alive.
It was a life cut way too short, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t leave her mark.
Talking about some of the things Winter liked Holland said, “For a ten month old she liked being thrown and hung upside down.” She also talked about how good of a baby she was. She said, “I still think to this day I don’t think she knew how to produce tears. She was just not a very good crying type of child.”
As for the suspect, the judge released her on her own recognizance, which is something Holland isn’t happy about. She said, “I’m a little irritated because almost anywhere else I’ve lived she’d be sitting in jail right now.”
But just because she’s out of jail doesn’t mean she’s off the hook by any means. If Davis is found guilty, she could face up to 25 years in prison for the 2nd degree murder charge alone.
WICKENBURG, AZ – Authorities say a man died after his vehicle was swept down a wash near Wickenburg on Saturday night.
According to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, 65-year-old Richard Leonard Evans was traveling home just after 6 p.m. when he tried to drive his SUV through a wash crossing Red Hill Road.
“We saw him come down the road, there was a river flowing really high in the wash. We told him not to go through it but he told us it wasn’t that bad,” said neighbor Guy Rodmonich.
The roadway was flooded and he was swept away. Evans was just a few feet from his driveway.
Rescuers reached Evans and transported him to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
“We saw him trying to steer the SUV. He was hitting every tree in his path. We tried to rescue him but there was nothing we could do,” said Brandon Pruitt who watched the scene unfold.
MCSO spokesman Chris Hegstrom said Evans’ vehicle was nose down in the dirt and there was water in the vehicle when he was found.
“The roads are treacherous,” Hegstrom said. “Can’t stress enough that if you see water on the roadway flowing at any speed you don’t know how deep it is. You need to avoid the area, it’s not safe.”
Hegstrom said deputies helped with a number of water rescues in the area, including one with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office in which the MCSO helicopter was used.
GLENDALE, AZ – A 1-year-old girl was flown to Phoenix Children’s Hospital in extremely critical condition after being pulled from a back yard pool in Glendale Friday evening.
Mike Young of the Glendale Fire Department said the call came from a residence near Bethany Home Road and 75th Avenue.
The girl was being watched with four other children by their grandmother at a home owned by the child’s aunt.
Fire officials say the girl’s 3-year-old brother opened the back door so the kids could get to the back yard.
There is a pool fence but it apparently doesn’t close all the way.
You could see from Air15 video that the pool is green and murky.
Fire officials say the girl was found face down in the pool for an unknown amount of time.
She was flown to the hospital and is expected to recover.
MESA, AZ – A 68-year-old Mesa woman was found floating in her son’s backyard pool Sunday after her husband noticed she was gone from the home.
Police said the woman’s husband left their home for an afternoon meeting, later returning to find that his wife, Davene Montierth, was not there.
One of his sons living next door returned home after getting a phone call from his father, finding his mother floating near the top of the water in his backyard pool, according to police.
He pulled Montierth out of the water and another family member called 911.
Officials said the pool was very dirty.
The Mesa Fire Department was called to the scene and later pronounced Montierth deceased.
The case is being handled as a drowning, but the investigation is ongoing.
A Valley father received a call that his 1-year-old son was in the hospital and they weren’t sure if he was going to survive.
It was May 13, 2008 when Eric Myers’ wife went to check on her son who was being watched by a relative.
That relative had a backyard swimming pool, but no fencing around it.
The boy was found floating in the water. He had been in there for four minutes.
Four years later, Myers took part in a news conference hosted by the Mesa Fire Department and Cardon Children’s Medical Center warning parents about the dangers of unsupervised children in homes with pools.
“Go home tonight,” Myers said, “sit on the couch with your kids and actually look at a clock. Watch the hands move and count four minutes. Watch how many times your child takes a breath during that time and imagine those breaths being robbed by water.”
Doctors were able to save Myers’ son, who is now a healthy 5-year-old, he said.
So far this year, seven children have drowned in the Valley.
