Her Toddler Son Drowned In Her Mom And Dad’s Pool, And Now She’s On A Mission To Raise Awareness For Water Safety
Over a decade ago, TikToker Veronica’s (@living_for_garrett) three-year-old son, Garrett, died in a drowning accident. He was the youngest of five kids, and he died in her parents’ swimming pool 18 hours after they arrived.
At the time of the accident, Veronica was 34 years old. She was born and raised as a swimmer. She learned how to swim from a young age and was very comfortable in the water.
She was on swim teams and even became a competitive lifeguard and Red Cross instructor. She took water safety very seriously.
Veronica was a lifeguard for seven years, and during that time, she witnessed and experienced near-deaths from drowning accidents.
She did some rescues where she had to perform CPR, and luckily, she never lost anyone, but there were some close calls.
In 1999, her parents bought a new house and installed a swimming pool. The builders asked them if they wanted to put up a fence, but they decided against it. Over the next decade, Veronica’s dad kept working on putting up the fence himself.
Veronica was concerned about the safety of the swimming pool due to the unfinished fence. It was a source of great tension between her and her parents. By the time she started having kids of her own, the fence was still not done.
In July 2014, her dad traveled from Fort Worth, Texas, to where she lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. The family then traveled together to Texas.
On the way there, the topic of the pool came up. The fence was now finished, but did not have a self-closing hinged gate or lock, which Veronica was adamant about.
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That night, they arrived at her parents’ house around 8 p.m. The first thing she did was check out the swimming pool.
She saw there was no lock on the gate. She vowed to find one around the house or at the hardware store in the morning.
But while she was in the shower that night, Garrett snuck out of the house and went into the pool. When she found him, he was floating facedown in the water.
Garrett’s tragic death has inspired Veronica even more to raise awareness about water safety, especially when it comes to kids. You can never take too many precautions.
More About:Human Interest