Eighteen-month-old twins, a boy and a girl, drowned in a pool at their family home in Oklahoma after their great-grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, left a back door open.
By the time their mother, Jenny Callazzo, found Locklyn and Loreli at the bottom of their murky pool, the twins had already lost consciousness.
Callazzo, 37, was seen by first responders from the Oklahoma City Fire Department administering CPR on the twins and desperately trying to revive them as they arrived.
Callazzo is a stay-at-home mom who runs an online boutique store and lives at the house in Cobblestone, Oklahoma, with her husband, 42-year-old marketing executive Sonny Callazzo, her six children, and her grandmother. Neighbors said the family had moved into the home a year before the tragedy.
Aerial footage of the residence shows a pool filled with murky, greenish water, the green color probably due to algae.
A family member told police and reporters that Callazzo’s grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s, had left a back door open, resulting in the toddlers gaining access to the pool.
The mother found her babies at the bottom of the pool at around 10:45 a.m. on Thursday, March 16, and they were pronounced dead at 1 p.m.
An investigation into the twins’ death has been launched, but police say it does not appear to have been intentional.
Callazzo had posted pictures of the twins playing outside the home just a few days before the tragic incident.
Paramedics continued to perform CPR on the toddlers on the way to the Baptist Hospital, where they were pronounced dead on arrival.
The Oklahoma City Fire Department released a statement saying they were unsure exactly how long the babies had been in the pool.
Laura Gamino, Injury Prevention Coordinator at Oklahoma University Medical Center, urged parents to take extra precautions regarding toddlers and pools, saying that we need an awareness of just how deadly water can be for youngsters.
According to Gamino, children are irresistibly drawn to water and the young cannot save themselves. One of the scariest things about drowning, she added, is that it is often a swift and silent way to go.
