Twin 3-year-olds, a girl and a boy, died Monday after authorities found them in a pond near their family’s home in a Kansas City suburb, according to police, who said the toddlers’ father had reported them missing.
The father, who was not identified, woke up Monday morning and couldn’t find the twins in the house, the Kansas City Star reported. Shortly after 10 a.m., the paper reported, he called 911 twice and rushed outside to look for the toddlers. Neighbors called emergency services as well, according to the Star.
When emergency crews arrived, someone had pulled the girl out of the pond and had begun to perform CPR on her, police told local media, not specifying who found her. Medics rushed her to a hospital in critical condition. She was pronounced dead about 1 p.m.
Authorities had trouble locating her brother. Some emergency workers searched the family’s house, thinking he might have gone to the house for help, the Star reported. Others scanned the pond.
Eventually, a dive team arrived and found the boy near a covered dock that stretches about a quarter of the way across the water. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene, local media reported.
The Platte County Sheriff’s Office identified the twins as Arrabelle and Elijah Wagner.
An investigation is ongoing. So far, police said, the twins’ deaths appear to be accidental.
“We don’t have anything at this point that leads us to believe that this was anything other than a tragic accident, but as with all deaths we’re going to investigate it thoroughly,” Platte County Undersheriff Maj. Erik Holland told the Star. “The time frame that I have is the father woke up and the children were not in the residence.”
The pond sits at the end of a small, grassy incline behind the family’s house and several others. The neighborhood is near Edgerton, Missouri, a town of about 500 people located 30 miles north of Kansas City. It’s not clear whether any other family members were home when the twins went missing.
A neighbor, Emily Rule, told Fox 4 she worried for the other children in the neighborhood.
“Breaks my heart,” Rule said, “knowing that it could happen at any time.”
(c) 2017, The Washington Post ยท Derek Hawkins
