Unwatched Boy Drowns in Pool In Apparent 'Tragic Accident'

A 19-month-old boy left unattended in his mother's Charles County home Tuesday wandered into the back yard and apparently drowned in a pool, police said yesterday.

Jason Daniel Burke Jr. was discovered by his mother just after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday lying unconscious in an aboveground pool in the 4300 block of Middletown Road in White Plains, said Diane Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Charles County Sheriff's Office. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead, authorities said.

Richardson said the mother had left her house to run an errand, telling the toddler's 15-year-old cousin, who lives in the house, to watch the boy while she was gone. The cousin, Richardson said, left to go fishing.

"We're still trying to determine whether the teen was aware that the child was still in the house," Richardson said. "All indications are that this is a tragic accident."

Jason, who was asleep in a bedroom when the cousin went out, left the house through the back door, walked about 65 feet to the pool and climbed the steps to get in, Richardson said. The pool stands about four feet off the ground, she said.

When the mother returned, no one was in the house and the baby gate was on the floor, Richardson said. The mother called police to report her son missing, Richardson said, then called back to say she had found him in the pool.

A man who answered the door at the mother's home declined to comment. He said the mother was in the hospital because she was feeling "unstable" after the incident.

The boy's body was sent to Maryland's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore for an autopsy, authorities said. Police said the death appeared to be accidental and didn't expect charges to be filed. Richardson declined to identify the child's mother.