COSTA MESA : Boy Choked Before Pool Fall--Coroner

A coroner’s autopsy showed Tuesday that a 2-year-old boy choked to death on the rubber end of a door stop before he fell into his grandparents’ backyard swimming pool, authorities said.

Erik Garcia, 2, of Costa Mesa was found face down by his mother in a pool in the 800 block of Cortez Street, police said. Police and fire officials originally thought that the child, who they said was left alone for about 15 minutes while his mother was on the phone, had drowned.

Erik had ingested the rubber tip of a door stop, which is about the diameter of a dime, and then choked and fell into the pool, said Deputy Coroner Cherry Van Stee. She said the cause of death was “immediate asphyxiation due to aspiration of a foreign object.”

Van Stee said she did not know how long the child had been in the pool.

“Apparently it was just a few minutes,” she said.

The mother of the child, who wasn’t identified, had been talking on the phone when she noticed that her son was missing. She then saw a sliding glass door that led to the pool area was open, police said. She went outside and found her son in the pool. The woman jumped in the pool, grabbed Erik and then called 911, police said.

Paramedics took the boy to College Hospital Costa Mesa, where he was pronounced dead at 10:55 a.m.

Marci Vignola, the child’s grandmother, said that he and her daughter had been living at the Vignolas’ home. She declined to elaborate on the incident.