A Utah toddler died after his mother drove him into a golf course pond on Sunday night.
His mother, who was found “passed out” on the ground nearby, has been arrested.
At about 11:15 p.m. Sunday, South Salt Lake police received a report of a vehicle driving on the golf course at Golf in the Round. There they found a 28-year-old woman “passed out” near a fence, according to jail documents. She was “lying on the ground and appeared to be trying to sleep.” The woman said she had been drinking, police wrote, and told them she’d “arrived there in a car.”
Officers found the car in a golf course pond near 700 West 3300 South, and found an 18-month-old boy in a car seat in the submerged vehicle. The boy had been under the water “for a substantial period of time in cold water.”
According to police, the woman’s clothes were soaking wet and “it appears she was in the vehicle” when it went into the pond. Police said the boy’s mother “made no attempt” to rescue him; that she “admitted she had been drinking and smoking marijuana; and that she knew the child was in the car.
The toddler was taken by ambulance to Primary Children’s Hospital, where he later died.
The boy’s 28-year-old mother was booked into the Salt Lake County jail on suspicion of child abuse homicide, DUI and criminal mischief. According to police, she caused “substantial damage” to the golf course and the pond.
