One-year-old Logan foster girl Emelia Jade’s drowning examined by Coroners Court

More heartbreaking details surrounding the death of a one-year-old girl have been revealed, whose body was found by her 8yo foster brother — and if their backyard pool was compliant.

A little boy discovered his tiny foster sister’s body in distressing circumstances at their home in Logan.

A coroner has investigated the drowning of the one-year-old girl, who was one of six children under 12 in the care of her foster parents at the time of her death.

Emelia Jade was just one month shy of her second birthday when she drowned in her foster carers’ pool on February 13, 2020.

The pool was fenced but the lock on the gate was not working.

At the time of her death she was the subject of a Child Protection Order, under the guardianship of the Chief Executive, Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women’s Services (the department) and living with two foster carers in Jimboomba.

Also living at the Jimboomba home were five other children — a four-year-old boy, a six-year-old boy, an eight-year-old boy, an 11-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl.

They lived on 2.8 hectares of land and the house had four bedrooms for the household of eight.

In non-inquest findings released on Wednesday, Deputy State Coroner Jane Bentley found Emelia had ‘accidentally’ drowned in the pool just before 8.30am.

That morning one of the foster carers woke about 6.15am and got breakfast ready.

Emelia woke up shortly after that and was watching television in the lounge room as the family went about their daily routine, getting the older children ready for school.

According to the coroner’s report, Emelia and the three-year-old girl were last seen in the lounge room.

When the other foster carer went to find Emelia they saw she was missing and the family looked around the house and surrounds for her.

Sometime after 8am the carer saw that the patio gate was open and told the little boys to see if Emelia was outside.

Her eight-year-old foster brother found Emelia in the pool, and yelled for help as he pulled her out.

One of the foster carers ran to the pool and commenced CPR and carried Emelia inside, while the other carer called triple-0 at 8.17am.

Queensland Ambulance Service paramedics attended and also attempted to resuscitate Emelia, but they were not able to do so and she was pronounced dead at 9.11am.

An autopsy was performed and the forensic pathologist concluded that Emelia died from drowning.

Ms Bentley agreed with that conclusion.

“Emelia Jade’s death was due to accidental drowning,” the report read.

Police officers who visited the Jimboomba home after the accident found the pool gate was out of alignment and was not self-locking.

Later that day, officers from Logan City Council attended and conducted an examination of the pool fencing, including the gate and locking mechanism.

They found that the gate and the lock were out of alignment causing the lock not to engage when the gate was closed.

Logan police officers concluded it was likely Emelia made her way through the child gate between the lounge room and the kitchen, onto the patio area, and then through the patio gate to the pool.

Police believe that the patio gate was opened by the other children when they were getting ready to go to school.

The pool gate was not locked properly due to the locking mechanism not latching properly after the boys had been swimming the evening before.

Investigators also commented that the Department of Child Safety had no mechanism in place to ensure that foster carers had ongoing compliance with regards to pool safety.

Council records indicated that the pool fencing had been fully inspected on 27 April, 2016 and a pool safety certificate issued on that date.

The expiry date was 2018 but there was no requirement to have a further inspection unless the property was sold.

Logan City Council inspected the pool after Emelia’s death and found four regulatory breaches:

• The pool fence was too low;

• The gate did not close despite trying the latch from different angles;

• The hinges on the gate were incorrect; and

• There was a box on the inside of the pool yard.

It was identified that during flooding in January 2020 the ground had destabilised which had caused the gate to become misaligned and not shut properly.

According to the Coroner’s report, Emilia’s foster carers were ‘highly experienced’ and had been carers for 36 years.

They were 76 and 74 years old at the time of her death.

It was noted that the department stated that child safety officers were concerned about their capacity to care for all of the six children in their household, particularly considering the young age of the children.

“I find that Emelia Jade died from drowning. Her death was due to accident,” Ms Bentley said.

“At the time of her death, she was being cared for by experienced foster carers who, due to a lack of foster carers, were responsible for six children under 12 years of age.”