Two 5-year-old girls drowned on Sunday in a family swimming pool in Georgia and the father of one, Sophia Juarez, is blaming their live-in-nanny and grandmother to the second girl, Mia Penoyer, for not keeping track of the two.
Sgt. Bill Gorman with the Dallas Police Department stated that while the housekeeper was on a 45-minute phone call, the two girls slipped outside, unattended, according to The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Gorman stated that:
“When the family returned home, they were looking for their daughter, and her 10-year-old brother found both little girls at the bottom of the swimming pool.”
Eduardo Juarez, Sophia’s father, stated that his daughter was a good swimmer, and likely tried to help the other girl, before they both went under. Gorman elaborated that:
“The little girl who lived at the residence was a swimmer — she could swim back and forth the length of the pool — and the other little girl was a non-swimmer, couldn’t swim at all. We can only speculate as to how the two of them ended up in the pool. No one saw anything, no one witnessed anything.”
The Dallas-Hiram Patch reports that the grandmother, whose name has not been released, was admitted to the hospital following the incident. Gorman stated that she is set to be charged with reckless conduct, a misdemeanor, for not properly watching the two girls. Following the incident, she was admitted to WellStar Paulding Hospital for evaluation. Gorman explained that:
“As you can well imagine, she was extremely, extremely overwrought and devastated.”
Authorities have not released her name, pending her release from the hospital. Gorman also added that the mother of one of the deceased girls was also admitted to the hospital on Sunday.
