Sauk Village police and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services are investigating the apparent accidental drowning of a 6-year-old boy who had only been placed in a foster home for a day, authorities said Thursday.
Rodney Gest apparently fell into a half-full swimming pool Wednesday in the back yard of the home where he was staying in the 21700 block of Clyde Avenue, according to Sauk Village Police.
Rodney was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Margaret Mercy Health Care Center in Dyer, Ind., a hospital spokesman said.
Rodney was one of eight foster children in the home. A 12-year-old boy was baby-sitting the children while his mother was away when the accident occurred, said DCFS spokeswoman Maudlyne Ihejirika.
The foster children have been removed from the home and the license of the foster mother will be revoked, Ihejirika said.
Sauk Village police Sgt. Tom Lacheta said the investigation of the drowning was “ongoing and we are waiting for DCFS to complete its investigation and talk with the state’s attorney’s office before charges, if any, are made.”
The mother, who authorities would not identify, was away for a court appearance, according to Ihejirika, who said she had no information about the nature of the court appearance. The woman’s husband was at work at the time, she said.
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Tina Johnson, 19, who lives next door, said she was home when Rodney was discovered in the pool.
Johnson, a college student home for the summer, said someone banged on her door, she ran outside and saw saw that Rodney’s pajama-clad body was lying on the ground near the pool with three men and a woman standing over him. One man, apparently part of a work crew that had been cutting trees nearby, was trying to resuscitate the boy.
“I went over . . . and began doing CPR. I never thought I’d use it,” Johnson said.
Other foster children in the home included Rodney’s two brothers, ages 5 and 2, who also were placed in the home Tuesday.
Another set of siblings–a boy, 10, and his sister, 6–were permanently placed in the home on July 22. There also were three sibling sisters, ages 9, 7 and 6, who were placed with the home temporarily last Friday for a week while their foster mother was on vacation, Ihejirika said.
DCFS has not had contact with the foster home, said spokeswoman Martha Allen.
“We do not see these families directly. We give them to private agencies and ask them to place them,” Allen said.
The case will automatically be investigated by the attorney general’s office, “which will look into all aspects of the case,” Allen said.
A foster home is allowed to have eight children in the home, Ihejirika said. “That includes any natural children of the foster parent, but even though there were nine, we make an exception when siblings are involved because we don’t want to break them up,” she said.
All of the foster children in the home were placed there by Extended Vision-A Child in the Mist, 5200 S. Ellis Ave., Chicago.
The 51-year-old foster mother was licensed in July 1996, said Extended Vision’s administrative program director Daisy Branson.
Branson said the agency has started the process of revoking the foster mother’s license, saying “it was against policy to leave the children in care of the 12-year-old.”
Branson said it was also against the agency’s policy for a foster parent to leave an above-ground pool uncovered if its use is not being supervised.