Child Drowns After Falling off Park Pier

A 21-month-old boy died Sunday after tumbling off a fishing pier in Laguna Niguel Regional Park, authorities said.

The boy was at the park with his father and a sibling about 1 p.m. near the No. 2 pier, Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Scott Brown said.

The father told authorities he had turned away briefly to retrieve fishing equipment. When he turned around again, his son had disappeared.

“The time it took for him to do that, the child had fallen into the water,” Brown said. “It shows how quickly, in a matter of seconds, this can occur.”

The boy was missing for 20 to 30 minutes as rescuers searched with their hands and feet before paramedic Lee Watt found him in vegetation in the water just off the pier, Brown said.

An anesthesiologist from Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, Ed Marroquin Jr., helped with resuscitation efforts before the child was taken to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, Brown said.

He said small children are especially at risk of drowning because their heads are disproportionately heavy compared with the rest of their bodies. Adults think they’ll hear a child in distress call out for help, but children go under head-first.