4-year-old girl drowns in Plantation neighborhood lake, police say

A 4-year-old girl drowned after her father found her face-down in a lake behind their Plantation home and started CPR, police said. The child was discovered around 10 a.m. in the 500 block of Northwest 107th Avenue in the Westport subdivision, a residential stretch where the water sat just steps from backyards and fences.

Plantation police said the father called 911 after finding the girl in the lake. Even with the immediate response, the child died. Detectives were treating the case as an apparent accidental drowning, and based on what they had learned so far, believed it was a tragic accident rather than anything intentional.

The setting makes the loss especially stark for West Broward families: this was not a public beach, pool or park lagoon, but neighborhood water behind a home in a suburban community. In places like Plantation, lakes and canals are part of daily scenery, which can make them easy to overlook until a child reaches them in moments.

Florida health officials say drowning is fast, silent and can happen in minutes. The Florida Department of Health says it is the leading cause of unintentional death for children ages 1 to 4 in the state, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drowning is the leading cause of death for children in that age group nationwide.

Broward County’s SWIM Central program says a child should never be able to enter a pool area unsupervised. The county says the drowning-prevention effort is supported by the Children’s Services Council of Broward County, which has provided more than $700,000 for water-safety instruction and outreach, including $275,000 in swim-lesson coupons since 2014 for children ages 6 months through 8 years.

The City of Plantation’s Water Smart Resources page points residents to adult supervision, effective barriers, emergency preparedness, swim lessons and CPR training. Those safeguards are the points of intervention officials routinely emphasize when young children live near water, where a brief lapse can turn into a fatal emergency before help arrives.

For families across Plantation and the rest of Broward County, the death is a reminder that backyard or neighborhood lakes can be as dangerous as any open water. The child’s name had not been released, and investigators were still working to determine how she reached the lake and whether any barriers or supervision gaps played a role.