Body Overlooked for 2 Days

The body of a 7-year-old boy lay for two days at the bottom of a swimming pool in Holmby Hills, overlooked during an exhaustive search by Los Angeles police after the child went missing from a weekend pool party, according to an autopsy completed Wednesday.

Paolo Ayala died of asphyxia from freshwater drowning, probably on Sunday between 2 and 3 p.m., said Craig Harvey, the Los Angeles County coroner’s chief of operations.

“The death has been ruled by the coroner to be accidental,” Harvey said. “Anatomical findings show no evidence of the body having been removed from the pool prior to discovery on June 4, 2002, at approximately 8:30 a.m.”

Los Angeles Police Department detectives said they made a visual inspection of the pool water, which they say was chalky.

About 50 officers took part in the two-day search, joined by bloodhounds and a helicopter, but police never entered the pool.

After a housekeeper spotted Paolo’s body in the pool early Tuesday, LAPD Deputy Chief David Kalish said someone had dumped the body overnight, unleashing the prospect of a grisly murder.

Within hours, however, Kalish conceded officers may have failed to notice the body.

“Clearly we learned from this situation not to rely on what you think you see,” Kalish told a news conference Wednesday outside the coroner’s office.

Responding to questions, Kalish would not say police had made a mistake. “I feel frustration, anguish and sadness. Our hearts go out to the family. I feel bad we were not able to bring closure to the family [sooner],” he said.

Saeed Farkhondehpour, owner of the pool and host of the party, said Wednesday his children kept saying during the search that the pool was murky.

“My kids kept telling me, ‘Daddy, you can’t see the bottom of the pool,’ ” he said. “But I just ignored them. The detectives ignored them.”

His daughter Kristina Farkhondehpour, 11, said she was about to go for a swim on Monday when her mother called her away. “You couldn’t see,” she recalled. “It was cloudy and stuff.”

Farkhondehpour said Kalish and detectives made the tragedy even worse by suggesting a murder plot. He added that at least 10 parents were poolside during the birthday party for his 7-year-old son, Paolo’s classmate at El Rodeo Elementary School. He said he cannot understand why no one noticed Paolo sinking. The boy was last seen in the shallow end with other children.

Paolo’s parents had brought him to the Wyton Drive mansion in the early afternoon Sunday and reported him missing about 5 p.m. Family members said the boy could not swim.

Kalish said parents at the party, police investigators and the boy’s mother all checked the pool and never saw the boy, who was wearing blue-and-white swim trunks.

He said aging plaster in the pool made the water chalky and created an optical illusion. “Everyone looked in the pool and saw what they thought was the bottom,” he said.

Los Angeles police officers never swept the pool, Kalish said, even though it was the last place the boy was seen. The pool is 35 feet long, 20 feet wide and 9 feet deep at one end. It has a light-colored bottom.

A pool cleaner poured chemicals into the pool Monday, Kalish said, and that may have cleared the water enough for the housekeeper to see the boy’s body. The pool cleaner did not sweep the pool, Kalish said.

LAPD sources said top officials in the department have begun questioning officers in charge of the investigation, as well as Kalish’s announcement Tuesday that someone must have dumped the boy’s body in the pool.

“There is no way he could have been missed,” Kalish said at the time.

Coroner officials said the failure by police Sunday to find the boy’s body made no difference in his death. “There was probably nothing that anybody could do,” said Harvey, the coroner’s spokesman.

Dr. James Ribe, who helped oversee the autopsy, warned parents that children can drown in minutes.

“All pools are dangerous,” he said, adding that adults must always keep watch over children who are swimming.

Ribe said the boy’s skin showed no signs that he was removed from the pool before discovery by the housekeeper, 41 hours after he was last seen. Ribe said skin easily bruises when a body is moved after death.

Paolo’s parents, Franklin and Edwina Ayala, stayed in seclusion at their two-bedroom Beverly Hills apartment Wednesday. Moments before a coroner’s news conference, they were told their son had drowned.

The couple were joined by friends and family as they watched the news conference on television, friends said.

“They feel there should have been a little more supervision at this party,” said Crisanto Benuto, a family spokesman.

Benuto said the family was in shock when the boy’s body was found Tuesday. “They don’t blame the police,” he said.

Kalish said Los Angeles Building and Safety officials cited the Farkhondehpour family for failing to have a fence around the pool.

Authorities initially suspected the boy might have been abducted because protective landscaping at the rear of the property, which borders Beverly Glen Drive, had been removed for a remodeling project.