Parents of Drowned Boy Sue Over Broken Fence : Lawsuit: Canal fence built 9 years ago on San Pasqual Indian Reservation after death of another toddler wasn’t maintained, according to suit, which seeks $24 million in damages.

The family of a 2-year-old boy who drowned in a canal June 15 on the San Pasqual Indian Reservation filed a $24-million lawsuit Thursday that charged the city of Escondido and the Vista Irrigation District with failing to maintain a fence through which the toddler crawled.

Bani Reyes spent 10 minutes under water before a 16-year-old girl squeezed through a hole in the fence and grabbed him as he floated by. Paramedics tried to revive the toddler, who died 12 hours later. In 1981, 2-year old Melissa Varella drowned in the same canal, which flows into Lake Wohlford and Lake Henshaw.

The lawsuit, filed in San Diego Superior Court on behalf of the boy’s mother and father, Miguel and Oliva Reyes, and brother and sister, Isai and Eonise, asks for $6 million for each family member.

C. Bradley Hallen, the family’s attorney, said officials from the city and water district put up the 8-foot fence that lines each side of the canal after Varella’s death nine years ago but failed to patch the holes that have since developed.

John Schell, an attorney for the irrigation district, said he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment. A spokeswoman for the Escondido city attorney’s office said the city had not yet been served.

The Reyes family lived in a mobile home on the Indian reservation on a plot they rented from the San Pasqual Indians. The canal was 25 to 30 feet from their home, Hallen said.

On the day of the drowning, Bani Reyes was playing with his 6-year-old brother, Isai, when Bani crawled under the chain-link fence, Hallen said.

Someone called Oliva Reyes, who ran with neighborhood residents to the canal. Maria Garcia, 16, heard the mother’s screams, scrambled to a hole in the fence downstream and plucked the toddler from the swift-moving current.

“The hole wasn’t enough to let an adult through,” Hallen said. “So they ran downstream and the first large enough hole was a half-mile down the canal. They pulled the child out but he was unconscious and died the next day.”

The fence was repaired the day after Reyes died, Hallen said.

In 1981, Melissa Crystal Varella wandered about 150 yards from her home while her mother was taking a shower and dropped into the canal. U.S. Border Patrol officers and sheriff’s deputies found the girl’s body about 200 yards below the pumping station at Old Juajita Road and Lake Wohlford.

After Varella’s death, several bands of Indians on the reservation were angry with the Escondido Mutual Water Co. and asked that the canal be made safer. Several people protested what they said was the water company’s inaction by dumping trash in the canal.

The Indians demanded that the canal be covered or a safety fence erected.

“They opted to fence the canal as the least expensive alternative,” Hallen said. “In the years thereafter, they permitted the fence to fall in disrepair and didn’t prevent people from gaining access.”

Hallen filed a claim in August with the city of Escondido and the Vista Irrigation District, which jointly maintain the canal. The claim was rejected.