Drowned Boy's Family Upset With Officer's Response

They say their three-year-old grandson might have survived if a Wichita police officer hadn't made them stop CPR. Isaiah Jones drowned in his grandparents' above-ground pool last week.

The boy's grandmother, Pam Jordan, was taking care of him as part of her daycare. She says just moments after seeing the boy playing on her locked back patio, he was gone. Thinking the boy might have sneaked back into the home, Jordan yelled Isaiah's name and called 911 to report a missing child.

Shortly after, she found him floating in the backyard pool.

Jordan says she scooped the boy up, took him into her kitchen, and the CPR she did on him was working. Jordan says the boy vomitted, regained a pulse, and color was returning to his blue lips. She says her grandson still wasn't breathing, though.

The family says they're upset because the first officer on the scene told Jordan to back away and didn't continue CPR. They say when two other officers arrived minutes later, they immediately grabbed equipment and restarted CPR.

"I trusted him to take over," says Pam Jordan, a former medical assistant. "That's why I specifically asked him, 'Are you going to take over?' It's a life and death situation."

The boy's grandfather, Mark Jordan, is an 18-year veteran of the Wichita Fire Department. He wasn't at the house when the boy drowned, but he says he's upset his grandson went minutes without CPR.

"He had a duty to act," says Mark Jordan. "Now, if he did not want to act at that point, he should have told my wife, 'You come on and you continue CPR.' Those were the options he had."

The Jordans admit they can't be sure if Isaiah would have lived under different circumstances.

"Isaiah probably could be home now," says Mark Jordan. "We don't know that, but what we do know is that whatever chance he had in that three to five minutes, it was taken away from him."

The Jordans have not filed an official complaint with the Wichita Police Department.

Police say they're investigating Isaiah Jones' death, the circumstances surrounding it, and statements made. There is currently no internal investigation into officer conduct.

A deputy chief with the department says right now there is no evidence the officer did anything wrong. The chief says some officers are trained in CPR while others aren't. The first officer to respond to Jones' drowning is a 20-year veteran of the police department, but Eyewitness News does not know if he is trained in CPR.