I can understand that there are many rules Lifeguard are supposed to follow, but they are by no means 100% risk free. Where were the parents of the 4 year old boy?? Lifeguards are not there to ensure 100% safety for anyones child. Lifeguards are there only to hopefully minimize the risk. I have no idea if the Lifeguard was paying attention or even following the rules, but it is simply the parents fault. "i mean would you not look after your own 4 year old child that cant swim at the pool?". I do not write this to give blame too anyone as i know being a parent is hard and it is tuff to always have your eyes on your child. But at the end of the day it is the parents fault!

I am a lifeguard at another Life Time Fitness facility. There are certain spots were the nearest lifeguard may not be able to see the boy, but that is when it comes to the other lifeguards to help out. When children are not able to swim, we do ask the parents put them in lifejackets, that we provide. I personally have had to make a save where the mother was painting her nails and the father was on his laptop. It was not as serious as a save, but some parents honestly think we are there to ensure there child is save. I can assure you that on a Spring Friday afternoon in Texas that pool is PACKED. It may have been difficult for the parent to watch their child, but if they knew they couldn't swim they could have at least taking some sort of safety measure. My heart goes out to the family and the employees of that Life Time.

The boy could swim, and it was in shallow water.

that is why they have a safety ratio requirement of only 3 children to 1 parent. the parent knows the ability of their own children - the lifeguard can only assume - the parent should always be in the same body of water as their children to prevent this - lifeguards have to watch 200+ children, the parent only has 3.

This didn't happen in the shallow end. It was about 4 feet deep where Colin was found. The news keeps reporting the wrong details. There were about 200 witnesses if someone would just bother to interview us. The worst part is that he was also about three feet from the lifeguard stand. The lifeguard did not pull him out of the pool, either. It was an adult swimmer who found him. The lifeguard didn't do anything and didn't even know CPR, apparently. Parents need to watch their children and not leave that job to lifeguards, but this one lifeguard also should have been even working there.

I am the mother of a 3 1/2 year old and we belong to the same gym where Colin went. They will not give us any details. For the safety of my own child I wonder if anyone witnessed this horrible incident and can share some info. Was he wearing a life jacket? Was he with a caregiver or parent? Was the adult distracted by his older sister? I just want to ensure I am protecting my child. Thanks in advance and God bless that angel and his family during this difficult time.

To Witness: Please contact the Austin American Statesman. They want to deliver more details to prevent further accidents, but cannot get any information from the police (as to witness information) or Lifetime. They have a blog similar to this one you could post on for the editor. Thank you in advance!!

I'm a member of the lifetime in Colleyville. I take my 2 1/2 year old swimming 2 to 3 times a week at the pool. I see lots of parents on the phone, reading a book or chatting with friends. On at least 2 occations I've seen kids get too far out and can't get back in. When the mom finally looked up and started running for her kid we all noticed. It happens that fast. My prayers are with the family that lost their "hero" and this should serve as a lesson to all adults to watch out for others around you.

I have worked at Lifetime and it frustrates me to no end that they all they care about it budgets and saving money. They NEED more lifeguards on stand. 8 lifeguards to watch 300-500 patrons is NOT SAFE!!! The guards sit on 15 min rotations getting only a 15 minute break in which they are expected to clean or fold towels during that time so the only break they are actually getting is every 2 hours for 15 minutes when they have Adult swim breaks. How do you expect a 16 year old to stay attentive, alert and responsive on stand when they don't get any time to relax their eyes from their scanning responsibilities. And when you want to pay them $7-$7.50 and hour what can you expect for your guards? This is the second drowning in 2 years in a Lifetime Pool because of the pool safety and lack of staffing they have because Lifetime wants to save money on budgets to keep their stock holders happy. All this money you have saved you have actually lossed so much more - Precious lives, children, becase you want to save a buck and are not running a safe environment.
Lifetime talks about being a premier employeer, about being innovative but how can you be a premier employeer when you treat your employees with such thoughtlessness? You have been just holding your breath for years praying that nothing will happen in your pools. Well now its time to WAKE UP and start looking at you pools with SAFE eyes instead of money saving eyes. Maybe the people that should be making the decisions on rotations and ratios shouldn't be the men in suits that have never stepped in the shoes of a lifeguard because if they have they would understand how exausting it is to watch and scan a pool for hours. Maybe if they came down to a Texas pool and sat out in 100 degree temps for a month they would learn to appreciate what these teenagers are doing and go back to Minnesota with a new appreciation for safety.
As for parents with small children. Get you asses in the pool with your children and watch them. Stay within arm reach of them at ALL TIMES!!!!! It is NOT the lifeguards job to babysit your child. Thats your job!!!! Be responsible or don't take your children to the pool!! The guards are there to make sure you are being safe. I have seen parent after parent put their 2-6 year old in a pool and not even bring their bathing suit because they don't think they should have to get in and swim with their child. Shame on you!! Where in you mind do you ever think it is alright to let you child swim by themselve in a swimming pool at that age? Then when you tell them they need to be in the water with their child they get mad at you and don't understand what the big deal is. Heaven forbid you get your hair wet and mess up your make up or miss a phone call. All your kids want you to do is spend time with them. So put down your phones, labtops, books and watch your children. Don't rely on a lifejacket to do your job, don't rely on a 16 year old lifeguard and don't expect that someone else is going to do it for you. Take responsibility or don't go to the pool!!!!! And lifetime WAKE UP!!!!! Make some safety changes. I don't know why you didn't wake up the first time this happened, denial maybe? but how many deaths do you need? To me one was too many!

Heather, thank you for sharing that. I agree, business think about cost effective measures to save $. It is crazy to think that only a handful of lifeguards are responsible for so many folks at a time.

My prayers go to the family, I cant even imagine... I read some of the comments about the parents taking responsibility and it's true. I just hope that Lifetime fitness and similar businesses take responsibility for lack of staffing, they should be held responsible as well. God bless the family.

I am a lifeguard at another Lifetime Fitness facility. It is extremley important to realize the immense responsibility put into the hands of the lifeguards. Just today a ten-year-old boy asked me why his mother had to be swimming wiht him. I told him, there are over 200 people in the pool and i have to watch and account for every single one of them. Your mom however, only has to watch you too. The lifeguards are not here to be your babysitters, we have to watch so many people we cant spesifically attend to a ten-year-old boy whos mother is on the other side of the club getting a massage!
Last week, i made a save. It was a five-year-old mentally challanged boy with a younger brother. He was falling down the incline in about 3.5 feet of water. I jumped right in and got him, asking him if he was okay and where his parents were but he just looked at me blankly. when i fianlly found his mother she had her back turned. I approahced her "is this your son" and she gave me a comic look and said " did he go under again?"
She wasn't even concerned!

The responsibility lies in the hands of the parents. People put too much responsibility on the lifeguards. We are not babysitter.

My heart and prayers go out to Holst and his family. It is extremley tragic.

I work at Lifetime as well, and I have seen a man drown, because there was one lifeguard on duty for 2 pools and 2 hot tubs. All lifetime cares about is the money they can save, and how low below budget they can go, so their precious general manager, who does nothing, can get a bigger bonus. we, the employees make 7-8 dollars an hour, and work our butts off, and the GM sits around and makes over 100K a year...

I just wanted to let you people know, first off this loss is a part of my extended family that we were very close to, and that this article was not to place blame on anybody. And PETER you have the NERVE and DISRESPECT to post on a blog that the parents are to blame! You should be ashamed of yourself. All that should be put on here are condolences and heart felt prayers to the family and friends who lost a 4 year old boy. You should take deep look inside yourself and figure out how you can possibly say the things you did, and I know you aren't the only one, but you started it off. How dare you!

And it was a birthday party.

This is so tragic, my boys and I went to swim there on Saturday, and were told the pool was closed because of this tragic event. They need to put a limit on the number of people that can swim at one time, because it gets so crowded.

I feel so bad for the parents of this little boy, I have two of my own. I don't know the details and it is not up to me to judge, but for me, I would never leave the responsibility of my young child in the hands of a 17 year old life guard, that is too risky.

At this very life time, my 5 year old (who is learning how to swim) was going down the water slides, I went inside the floats to assist the lifeguard as he came down, twice, I had to assist my son because the lifeguard was not paying proper attention. No way would I trust my son's life to a teenage life guard, this is a horrible day, everyone else could learn from this tragedy.

Please watch your own kids, and everyone else's too.

We too experienced a lifeguard who didn't pay proper attention to our sliding non-swimmer. There is one lifeguard in particular who we've decided just will never catch our kid in time to prevent him from going WAY under and choking on water. So we avoid the slides when she's on duty. But the underlying problem I think with the Lifetime pools is a deadly combo of parental complacency and under-qualified lifeguards who make poor judgments because they're really just too young to be given that responsibility. I'd like to see Lifetime pay its guards better so they can get some grown-ups on the pool staff, and every last one of them should be trained to resuscitate. I strongly suspect a lawsuit will come of last week's tragedy.

Thanks for all the kind comments. I have posted a follow-up article on the story with a response to many comments here:

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When my son was 16 months old he snuck out the doggy door at my aunts house and fell in the pool. there were no adults around outside to see this happen. By the grace of God my aunt went to check the pool and found him floating. He had been under between 2-5 minutes. Fortunately he lived and he is a healthy 8 year old boy today. I don't care how many life guards were on duty that day or what the caregiver was doing or not doing. IT DOESN'T MATTER. What does matter is that a 4 year old died because someone, no matter who it was, was NOT PAYING ATTENTION. Water is fun, but is so very dangerous. stop looking for who to blame but instead lets make people aware of how dangerous water is. Ever heard of dry drowning. a child can go swimming and get water in their lungs, show no signs and die hours later but we never hear about that. The fact is it may say water "park" but water can kill. PAY ATTENTION...EVERYONE. use caution....

I live in a community where I pay a hefty HOA fee, and have to deal with REAL teenage lifeguards. Every summer I have to call the office to complain how these kids laugh at their friends goofing off at the pool and not doing their jobs. I work at Life Time. I have chosen to take my child swimming there this summer, and still will, because the fact that 90% of their guards ARE NOT teenagers, but have been lifeguards for 10+ years. All of them must be certified at the proper levels, and yes that does mean that every one of them knows cpr. It is very easy to judge and place blame on this tragedy, but the fact is that it is a horrible, horrible accident. Do not blame the guards, and especially do not blame the parents. I am pretty sure every one of you placing blame has not paid 100% attention to your children no matter what the circumstance is. I know I for one have fallen in this category. He was a sweet sweet boy and the family is amazing. As are the staff at this particular Life Time.

Do not judge. Do not blame. Nothing good will come of such. It will not bring this little one back. Learn. Remember. Pray. Love.

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We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love

-Carolyn Arends

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Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

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2 Samuel 12:15-23

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Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

-Mary Elizabeth Frye

I did not realize that so many people out there were perfect parents. That you have never lost sight of your child in the store, that you know every second where he/she is, even in the house. It must be wonderful to think of yourself as being the model parent. How dare you point blame at these parents who have lost a precious child. You should be praying for them and thanking God that it was not you that is experienceing this. Believe me, it could just as easily happen to you. Your child is playing the yard, the ball goes into the street, he follows and you, even with your eyes on him at that moment, watch him follow that ball out into the street and run in front of a car. You were there, but it was just a horrible accident. I pray that you never have to experience the heartbreak of losing a child. I cannot believe that you people are so cruel.

"Judge not, that ye not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." Matthew 7: 1 & 2.

I am also a lifeguard at another lifetime facility. I agree that there is no reason to put blame. These things do happen, and yes it's the responsibility of the lifeguards, and yes it's the responsibility of the parents. It is so awful what happened, but it should be a wake up call for all employees of Lifetime Fitness, and lifeguards everywhere.

You cannot place blame on the lifeguards or the parents. Lifeguarding is a hard job, and when there are 200+ patrons in the water it is very easy to miss one. We are having extra training at our facility because of this incident.

I Am the little boys teacher and all of ya'll are selfish you should be thinking of his family his mother his father and his 6 year old sister!!! You should be praying for the family and not be so concerned of how it happened or whos at fault even his own father isn't pointing fingers!

Well, I just got the full story. Apparently the mother was in the pool right next to Colin. She saw him bobbing up and down and turned to talk to a friend for a few minutes, and that is when he drowned.

It was a horrible accident, but the mother should never have taken her eyes off a 4 year old for more than a few seconds.

We can all learn a lesson from this tragedy, water is dangerous, watch your kids like a hawk, and everyone else's kids too.

I have to agree with you Carolyn. My whole heart and soul is grieving for this family! I can say that this tragic accident has been very sobering for me, as a parent of 3 children, ages 5 and under. I consider myself to be vigilant in watching my kids, but lets face it folks, when those little ones get something or somewhere on their minds, they're so fast, and out of sight in a flash! I can say for myself, this has happened to me more times than I'd like to admit...by my side one second, then in the next I'm in a panic b/c I can't locate my child instantly! This event, being very unfortunate, has been a major wake-up call for myself. Again, my sincerest condolences goes out to Colin's family.

Wait, "member_there_too"... I don't know where you heard that story about the mother being right there with Colin. I'm not at all interested in blaming Colin's mom, but the fact is, she was more than 60 feet away from Colin. Please don't muddy the public record on this with hearsay. If you weren't one of the initial four people trying to save Colin (I was), you shouldn't claim on a public message board to know what happened. The family's case will only be damaged by such hearsay if this ever goes to court.

To SlideMom who posted on
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 12:15 PM ES

If your kid cannot swim he shouldn't be going down the slide.

According to the police report the child was not in 4 feet of water, he was in the shallow end by the mushroom

According to the police report, the child was not an experienced swimmer but had just recently learned to swim.

According to the police report, the mother was not in the pool with the boy. She was sitting at the poolside visiting with two of her friends.

I am not passing judgement on anyone. This is a tragedy we should all learn from. This child was improperly supervised and the mother will live with this for the rest of her life. The lifeguards have far too many people to watch at this pool. Their hyper-vigilance since this accident is obvious.

To everyone posting comments on the parents and the boy's mother, she was sitting by the poolside watching her two children play and looked away for a matter of seconds to talk to her friends. I'm sure that anyone with children has at one point glanced away for a few seconds. This is a terrible tragedy and none of yall can begin to understand the pain this family is experiencing, please refrain from such terrible remarks as they are despicable. The mother was not neglecting her child in anyway and to say so is not only lying, it is sinful. I mean not to be rude only to ask that such slander is not posted and compassion be shown upon this poor family.

Sadly, tragic accidents DO happen. Sometimes accidents ARE preventable and it is important to question how this accident happened, what could have been done to prevent it, and how to prevent another tragic accident from occuring. It is not "sinful" to question the circumstances of an accident. I realize that many posters feel a personal loss because they knew this precious boy, but there IS fault and negligence here and it needs to be addressed. I am certain that everyone who could have prevented this tragedy is in agony over this and my heart goes out to them.

More ...

Parents and caregivers, please go to the above link to read how to PREVENT child drownings. Any child can drown, even older children who are strong swimmers in shallow water.

Thanks for being respectful to the family at this time of loss.
Also, don't be afraid to respond with your name and use good email addresses as opposed to ghost email accounts.

It is very apparent that ghost bloggers have been visiting this site and making posts to affect the public perception or more for public relations for Life Time Fitness either possibly by their employees or attorneys who have more than likely been put on call for this tragic event and told to monitor this site regularly.

Jhop: If you've read the police report, then you are either an employee of APD (what are you doing speaking about an open case on this message board?), or else you are a reporter (why aren't you publishing)? And if you've really seen the police report, then you have my home phone number, so call me and we'll talk. We don't disagree on everything.

Our hearts are heavy with the loss of Colin.
I realize many of you are struggling to make sense of it all and also want to learn from the tragedy to prevent future ones. This terrible tragedy has touched our hearts and opened our eyes without anyone having to place blame or be unkind.

The family has a long road ahead of them in healing. We pray for them and focus our thoughts upon them for comfort. That is what matters now. Helping and supporting them. Showing God's love through us and our actions.
God bless them and all those in their lives.

The best lifeguard team work at Lifetime Fitness south Austin. it's Unbelievable! absolutely they were watching girls, bikinis, tanning, talking, laughing , and more. A real lifeguard is responsible for overseeing the safety of the users of a recreational water feature, that's their job, all what happened was a human error, and those errors killed a kid, firstival, where were the parents? that's the big question, but what about the teenager lifeguards in that location (lifetime fitness south Austin) who suppose to watch the people to save people, congratulations lifetime fitness south Austin because you've got the best lifeguard team in Texas, congratulations dear Manager of lifetime fitness south Austin, you are doing great hiring people like that. That was a huge mistake and somebody has the responsibility and somebody need to pay for that. lifeguards are not babysitters, yes! we understand that, but their job is overseeing the safety all the time, and if the pool is full, they have to work twice, that's their job. Lifeguards are qualified strong swimmers, trained and certified in water rescue. not teenagers with a seasonal job.

MANAGER OF LIFETIME FITNESS SOUTH AUSTIN ******************* QUIT ***************

Lifetime has been covering there behinds with so many inaccurate reports. First they reported in the statesman.com that Colin was found under the lifeguard stand then it was said Colin was near the mushroom water fountain in a foot to foot and a half of water. Lifeguards NOT paying attention and a swimmer notice Colin!!! A lifeguard is guarding the life of the swimmer...not babysitting but preventing death. What type of lifeguard training had taken place before this Austin Lifetime had opened?? Parent need to watch their children and lifeguards to be prepared and trained to handle emergencies....guarding swimmer's lives....Correct??

Lifetime Fitness South Austin looks very nice but the staff are a bunch of bozos. Just ask any of them for a corporate statement about the death in their pool. The people at the front desk stare at you in confusion and then tell you to look up the accident on Google. The lifeguards tell you that everything on Google is incorrect and roll their eyes at you for asking questions. The managers say a statement went out to all members. What did the statement say? They can't tell you. ("Actually, the email just went to the department heads."??!) No one seems to be able to respond in a professional manner, except for maybe some guy named Joel. He's up in an office somewhere. No one there seems too concerned about their public image or assuring their members about the safety of their facility. It's really unbelievable.