A 3-year-old Colorado boy died Sunday after being found unresponsive in a southwest suburban swimming pool, authorities said.
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The boy was reported missing Sunday morning from the 13000 block of Chicago-Bloomington Road in Homer Glen, according to Deputy Chief Ken Kaupas, spokesman for the Will County sheriff’s office.
Shortly after being alerted to the boy’s disappearance, dispatchers received a call that he had been found unresponsive in a neighbor’s swimming pool, Kaupus said. The neighbor performed CPR until sheriff’s deputies arrived and one of the deputies took over, Kaupas said.
Paramedics arrived soon after and took the boy to Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, where he was pronounced dead at 11:55 a.m., according to the Will County coroner’s office.
He was identified as Nathan Kackert, of Colorado Springs, Colo., according to the coroner’s office.
Sheriff’s deputies think the boy wandered onto the neighbor’s property, possibly through a gate left open after an event at the home Saturday night.
The boy’s grandfather, Don Kackert, said in an email that Nathan’s father, Army Staff Sgt. Shaun Kackert, his wife, Linda, and their two sons — Nathan and 7-month-old Ryan — were here visiting family.
Shaun Kackert, a 27-year-old graduate of Lockport High School, is stationed at Fort Carson, Colo., and due to deploy to Afghanistan next year, Don Kackert said.
He said the family believes Nathan was able to unlock the front door of the home while the family was sleeping and wandered next door.
“In hindsight, vision is always 20/20 and all of us will be haunted by ‘what ifs’ for the rest of our lives,” Kackert said in the email. “Sometimes circumstances line up in ways that present tragic results. Now we only have fond memories of a sweet, young boy.”
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