HUNTINGTON BEACH : Pool-Fence Warning Spurred by Tragedy

Officials Tuesday urged parents to fence in swimming pools, after a year-old Huntington Beach girl drowned in a back-yard pool.

Cashmere Jo Hale was found face down in the pool Monday after her mother answered a call at the front door. The child apparently made her way out of the living room through a sliding door, police said.

She was the fifth child to drown in Orange County swimming pools so far this year, and the third younger than 5 years old.

Police, who said the pool was not fenced off from the home, called the drowning an accident.

The girl’s mother, Trishia Hale, 33, answered the door about 5 p.m. and talked with an acquaintance about a car repair for “less than five minutes,” Police Sgt. Bill Peterson said. When Hale did not find her daughter in the living room, she noticed a sliding door ajar and she dashed outside.

Attempts by neighbors and paramedics to resuscitate the child failed, and she was pronounced dead at Huntington Beach Medical Center, Peterson said.

Most cities require fences around new homes with swimming pools, but county health officials prodded homeowners to also install separate fences and self-closing gates around the pools themselves.

‘We’re just sort of at the beginning of what we call our drowning season, so people need to take precautions,” said Amy Dale, program manager of the injury prevention division in the county’s health care agency. “It’s time to get those barriers up.”