Advocates urge safety measures for retention ponds after boy drowns

The tragic drowning of a little boy in Fort Myers is starting a conversation.

It’s only natural for people to gravitate towards the things they love, and 7-year-old Braylin Staco’s family told WINK News he loved water.

The little boy with autism was found dead in a retention pond in Lee County on Friday, and now a local man wants to make sure what happened to Braylin will never happen again.

WINK News reporter Haley Zarcone spoke with the man to find out how he hopes to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again.

Drowning in a retention pond specifically, John Fletemeyer said, is a preventable death.

Fletemeyer is the chairman of the International Drowning Prevention Alliance, and he’s taken a special interest in this tragedy.

“A child will walk to the edge of a pond and see a tadpole or frog,” Fletemeyer told WINK. “In Florida alone, there’s between 7,500 and 7,600 retention ponds.”

Sadly, it is not prevented enough.

Fletemeyer’s book Retention Pond Safety may seem niche, but it hits home for the young boy’s family.

Staco was autistic.

“Water is like a magnet to them, and they’re drawn to water depending on what level in the spectrum they are, but at any level, they’re certainly drawn to the water. And this is the reason that retention ponds are especially dangerous to children suffering from autism,” Fletemeyer explained.

• RELATED: Police report reveals how child with autism got out of house before drowning in Fort Myers pond

A portion of this book is dedicated to those with autism, and it states, in part, that water is a calming sensory for children with autism.

Within the last 18 months, Staco is the third child with autism to drown in Southwest Florida.

So what can be done?

Now that his book has hit the shelves, Fletemeyer hopes it catches the eyes of a state legislature.

“We need to have retention ponds with a barrier fence or fence-in all swimming pools that you see in a condominium complex or a public pool, they’re fenced in, and they prevent a barrier for a child to accidentally gain access to,” Fletemeyer explained. “Studies that we’ve conducted over the years, about 5%, show that retention ponds have barrier fences. 95% don’t. So 95% are especially dangerous.”

In regards to Staco’s drowning, DCF has received our request for their report, and they said they are working on getting that to us.