Last June, Ashley LaRue and Brandon Shenkman got the phone call every parent dreads.
While attending a Westchester County summer camp, their 5-year-old son lost consciousness in a swimming pool.
“They found him floating in the pool and my whole body went numb,” Shenkman said.
A police report from the incident says the boy was saved only when a private swim instructor, not employed by the summer camp, rushed over to administer CPR. A county health inspector, dispatched to investigate the emergency, concluded the summer camp, itself, failed to have enough lifeguards supervising the pool.
“Campers 4-5 years old [were] allowed in depths of up to 5 ft with no restrictions and no staff in the water,” the inspector wrote. “At the time of the incident it was stated no staff were in the water supervising non-swimmers.”
The camp, which was hosted and operated by staff at the Saw Mill Club in Mount Kisco, did not respond to the I-Team’s questions about the incident. In the two years leading up to the near-drowning, the health club and its sister facility, Saw Mill Club East, had been cited multiple times for inadequate lifeguard supervision at several pools – both under the company’s current and prior ownership.
“If I would have known the issues that had been ongoing, he would never have gone there,” LaRue said of her son.
LaRue and her husband say their son’s near-drowning demonstrates a gap in New York’s oversight of summer camps and the swimming facilities that often host them. Namely, that there is no easy, centralized way to look up safety records that could be indicators of lapses in water safety.
“If there were some easy way to pull the history of incidents at a camp, or at another care institution, or an after-school program and just see really what’s going on because there’s no transparency there. We would have never sent him there,” Shenkman said.
The two parents have now filed a lawsuit against the summer camp and its parent company Genesis Health Clubs. They’re also calling on New York State lawmakers and regulators to design a user-friendly website where parents can quickly see the safety records of summer camps and the swimming pools that host them.
“I was stunned to see that there is no transparency in this field,” said Steven Dorfman the attorney representing the 5-year-old’s family. “I’m taking it upon myself to investigate whether or not there could be any legislation that we can push forward to make that type of information known to parents.”
This is not a novel idea.
Last year, after years spent studying the issue of water safety, New York’s Temporary Commission to Prevent Childhood Drowning published a report calling for a list of recommendations aimed at saving lives in the water. One of the proposed reforms was for the state to build a “user-friendly web-based clearinghouse that consolidates all relevant reports and data on drowning and water-related injuries.”
“Transparency is lacking,” said Kaitlin Krause, a member of the Commission and founder of Rising Tide Effect, a nonprofit that offers swim instruction and water safety workshops to underserved communities.
“If we can create a central platform, user friendly, a clearinghouse type of thing, where can bring in all of the drowning data, the injury reports, the facility safety reports, we would equip parents and communities with way better options to make decisions on where they want to send their families to go and learn to swim.”
Though Genesis Health Clubs did not respond to questions from the I-Team, last summer the company told News 12 Westchester that it added additional lifeguard staffing and strengthened water safety protocols after the near-drowning.
Under previous ownership, the Saw Mill Club made headlines in 2018 as the target of a lawsuit from Karen Hinton, a former aide to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. She accused the club of negligence after a treadmill accident left her with a severe brain injury. In court filings, the health club has denied wrongdoing. A trial is scheduled for later this year.
