An 8-year-old boy who drowned in a backyard pool in Fort Lauderdale has been identified as authorities investigate how he ended up there.
An 8-year-old boy who drowned in a backyard pool in Fort Lauderdale has been identified as authorities investigate how he ended up there.
Fort Lauderdale Police said Ryan Amichette died after he was found in a pool in the 1100 block of Northwest 4th Avenue Monday night.
In a statement on Tuesday, police said they believe Amichette's death appears to be accidental.
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Officers had responded to the home and jumped into the pool to retrieve Amichette, who was rushed to Broward Health Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
Police said Amichette didn't live at the home and the homeowner didn't know him.
Detectives are still trying to determine how and why he entered the backyard and the pool.
Amichette's brother said the boy had gone missing after school. He said a babysitter was supposed to pick him up from school but that didn't happen.
"We had been looking for him for almost like three hours and all the way up to 6 and then I see a lot of police around the corner and then I ran to the police, I said 'y’all seen a little boy?' And then the police said 'we just found a little boy in the pool,'" brother Gibson Severe said.
The babysitter told the family she had seen Amichette walking with other kids and she called to him but he kept walking, Severe said.
It's unclear if he was alone or with other children when he made his way to the pool.
Severe said Amichette had moved to South Florida from the Bahamas about two years ago.
The pool is shared by a group of four different buildings and there's a fence around the property.
There are signs around the property that say it's protected by surveillance cameras, so police are hoping those could help investigators answer some questions.
