Lifeguards Too Slow, Boy’s Parents Claim

Cindy and Larry Driver are upset with lifeguards at Liberty Lake County Park even though the crew saved the couple’s 10-year-old son from drowning.

Cindy Driver said she thinks the lifeguards didn’t pull her son Cody from the water fast enough Saturday.

The boy, released from the hospital Monday after two days in intensive care, sank to the bottom of the lake after he jumped off a dock and his high-top sneakers filled with water.

His mother said he knows how to swim, but was under 10 feet of water for nearly five minutes and wasn’t breathing when he was rescued. “He was so blue,” she said. “I thought I’d lost my baby.”

The woman said Cody’s 10-year-old friend, Ryan Delight, alerted lifeguards his buddy was in trouble but they ignored him, thinking it was a joke.

Ryan dived into the water twice to try to help Cody but couldn’t get him out, the woman said.

Several people began diving from the dock to look for the boy, who was finally found by 9-year-old Abbey Aune, who kicked him with her foot, Cindy Driver said.

That’s when a lifeguard jumped in and pulled the boy from the water, she said.

“I was very unsatisfied with the lifeguards out there,” Cindy Driver said. “I had people who weren’t lifeguards coming into the water before the lifeguards did.”

Claude Cox, the county risk manager, credited the lifeguards with saving the boy.

The county’s Anna Agnew dived to the bottom of the lake and pulled him out, Cox said, and Tammy Swingle gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

“The bottom line is they must have done something right because they got him breathing,” Cox said. “They’re not rookies out there.”

Cox said the two lifeguards, whose ages he didn’t know, are “pretty shook up” by the Drivers’ attitude.

“We told them they did their jobs and did them well,” Cox said.

Cody was taken by ambulance to Valley Hospital, then flown by helicopter to Sacred Heart Medical Center, where he was admitted to the intensive care unit.

The family is monitoring him for pneumonia, but he is expected to fully recover, Cindy Driver said.

Cody, who answered the telephone when a reporter called Monday, appeared unfazed by it all.

He answered with typical 10-year-old brevity when asked how he was doing.

“Pretty good,” he said before handing the telephone to his mom.

, DataTimes