The Verde Valley was struck by tragedy last week with the drowning death of 8-year-old Dimas Mendez, of Prescott Valley. The boy was crossing the Verde River on the shoulders of his 39-year-old uncle on Saturday, July 4, when the pair accidently went into 7-feet-deep water and began struggling back to the surface.
According to the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, the boy began to struggle and his uncle swallowed water trying to pull himself onto a nearby rock ledge. The two were separated and the uncle pushed the boy toward the shore. While the uncle was able to reach the shoreline, the boy went under the water and did not resurface. The uncle, passersby and rescuers recovered the boy’s body after an hour-long search.
Unfortunately, child drowning fatalities are not uncommon in Arizona. For more than 30 years after record-keeping began in 1970, Arizona led the country in the drownings of children under the age of 5. Annually, between 10 and 20 children drown every year in our state, most of whom are young children who wander into a backyard pool in the Phoenix and Tucson areas.
Thanks to fences around pools and better efforts to teach children to swim and warn them about the dangers of being around water without a parent or guardian, Arizona has fewer drowning deaths per capita, but our state is still ranked No. 2, behind only Florida.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the per-capita child drowning rate for Arizona children age 5 and younger from 2000 to 2010 was 4.45 per 100,000, nearly twice as high as the national rate of 2.33 children per 100,000.
Despite the various waterways used by locals and tourists in Sedona and the Verde Valley, drowning deaths remain thankfully rare in our region.
Even so, parents and guardians need to be extra vigilant around water, be it Oak Creek, the Verde River, a swimming hole or the family pool. Teaching children to swim is not just a summer activity, it can be a vital life skill. If you recreate in a stream or river, make sure children have flotation devices properly rated and fitted for their size and weight. Most importantly, do not overestimate your ability to help a struggling person in the water, even a child.
It only takes a few precious minutes for a person to drown, so take precautions to prevent another tragedy.
