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Police in Saitama on Monday sent papers to prosecutors charging the head of a nursery school and a former employee with negligence in the death of a four-year-old girl who drowned in a swimming pool at the facility in August last year.
On Aug 24, just past 3:30 p.m., a teacher at the Medaka nursery school in Midori Ward called 119, reporting that a child who had been playing in the pool was floating lifelessly. The girl, Miku Akanuma, was unconscious when emergency medical staff arrived at the scene, Fuji TV reported. She was taken to hospital where she died at around 4 a.m. the next day.
At the time of the incident, a total of 19 children between the ages of three and five were playing in the pool while two women teachers were supervising them. The pool is six meters long, four meters wide and 70-95 cms deep.
Rules state that two supervisors must be on duty at all times; however, there was only one woman watching the pool at the time because the second woman -- who has been indicted -- had started to put pool equipment away. She told police she took her eyes off the children in the pool.
© Japan Today
17 Comments
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Vince Black
Good, lets hope they get taken to the cleaners over this. Death penalty is best for this level of heinous negligence but one step at a time
Magnus Roe
It's not always obvious when people are drowning, they don't scream and splash. Many people aren't aware of this
J-Dake
This is my worst nightmare. If you have little ones in daycare be vigilant with the staff to make sure they are following the rules at all times and report any time they don't; even if it isn't affecting your kids specifially.
The law in this case is not enough. 2 people watching 19 kids?! In any context that's simply not enough. But in a swimming pool?
My heart breaks for the little one and her parents.
Disillusioned
Kids and water are a dangerous mix. Even two supervisors are insufficient. All the penalties should go to the legislators who allowed this pool to be in operation without adequate safety regulations. Nursery schools with pools should have supervising staff trained and certified in both lifeguard and life saving techniques. I have no doubt this little girl would still be alive if those supervising the pool were trained in CPR. There was only a very short amount of time before she was discovered and I'm sure she could have been resuscitated. She died waiting for the ambulance. It's also pretty obvious the children were not wearing any kind of floaties or life vests. The pool is 95cm deep. Most 4 year olds could only just touch the bottom of that depth. Kids can drown in two inches of water.
cla68
Unlike the movies, drowning people don’t usually thrash and scream. It’s more of a circular motion with their arms as they struggle to keep their face above water. If the supervisor isn’t trained in what to watch for, it’s easy to miss.
Mike James
Inexcusable for a child to die in child care. But before you go jumping to conclusions, I would take closer look at the operator more than the teacher. Many, if not most operators are for profit, and make a lot of money from subsidies, which they pocket.
The really bad operators hire the bare minimum staff, pay the minimum wage, force unpaid overtime on them, make them work with only 3 or 4 days off a month, and then force a day schedule on them from 7am to 8pm. If they quit, they are blacklisted, and won't find work elsewhere. They are also trained to meet parents at the door with a smile and make sure the the parents don't ever see what really goes on behind the scenes.
I bet the one who left was cleaning up because they were one or two staff short, and if they didn't keep things running on time the operator would dock their pay.
If there is any industry in Japan which needs more oversight, it is child care.
RIP
GW
Not surprised, how many pictures of pools do we see insane overcrowding, LOTS
When I was a kid they limited how many could be in at one time & the pool had life guards & people had to get OUT of the pool every 20minutes for so to better prevent unseen accidents...….
SAD!
kohakuebisu
Great post from Mike James. The question has to be about the established protocols at that institution. Teachers can only be individually responsible if they failed to follow those protocols. You cannot single out individuals if the system was an accident waiting to happen.
Ah_so
"Welcome to your new job as a childcare worker. By the way, if a child dies you will be executed"
Can't really see many takers for a job with those terms and conditions.
ebisen
it doesn't get any clearer than this. When you should be supervising kids, you do not put away unused equipment, or do anything else. You supervise kids, and that's it.
blvtzpk
I think I’ve lost count of the things that Vince Black thinks should be punished with by the death penalty...
nakanoguy01
Do you have any data to back this up? How in the world can day care teachers get blacklisted? This sounds ridiculous. Time to put back on the tin foil hat.
What I find ironic about the article is that the woman who was actually watching over the kids wasn't indicted. Shouldn't she be more responsible for the death of the child than the woman who was putting things away?
ArtistAtLarge
Having almost drowned when I was a small child, I can tell you it is a very scary experience.
Goodlucktoyou
such a small pool but 19 kids? should split it into two groups with one teacher for each group.
therougou
I guess the thinking is that: one person might miss something - so require 2 people watching - 1 person didn't do her job, so she is responsible. So it is already kind of accepted that one person might miss something, but not doing your job is something that could have been prevented.
Anyway, this is why I don't let my wife work, and have her home to watch the kids as much as possible. I've only seen the inside of one daycare, and that was enough for me. Preschool and elementary school teachers are also often too inexperienced, which is why you see incidents of kids dying of heat stroke while at school. Of course it depends entirely on the school.
Ah_so
No, because watching them requires two people. She wasn't the one who had left her post.