Deputy Saves Boy, 4, Pulled From Pool

An off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy saved the life of a 4-year-old boy who fell into an Orange condominium complex pool unnoticed Sunday evening.

The boy, Robert Anthony Garcia, was underwater for three or four minutes before a neighbor dived into the pool and recovered the boy, said father Philip R. Garcia. The deputy gave the boy CPR.

The boy was kept Sunday night at Children’s Hospital of Orange County under observation but suffered no noticeable effects from the ordeal, his father said.

“Right now, he’s tired and he wants to go home,” Garcia said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Austin was visiting his sister at the condominium complex when he heard a commotion at the pool in the 700 block of West La Veta Avenue, said Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman Scott Butler. A resident dived in and recovered the boy. Then Austin, with help from Garcia’s mother, began CPR.

Members of the Garcia family speculate the boy left a shallow wading pool unnoticed and fell into an adjacent, deeper pool about 6:51 p.m.

“Because of the CPR, [Austin] brought the boy back,” Butler said.

“Had he not been there, who knows what would have happened.”

Orange Fire Capt. Ian McDonald said the boy had very weak respiration when paramedics arrived. In the ambulance, the boy was hooked up to machinery that helped him breathe and by the time he reached the hospital, he was crying loudly.