A 3-year-old boy drowned in an above-ground pool at his Staten Island day-care center Thursday after he stacked boxes to climb up and jumped in while no one was watching, sources said.
Edward Harris splashed into the pool at the The Mother Byrd Family Day Care Center in Mariners Harbor at about 5:30 p.m. His maternal step-grandfather — a former lifeguard — found him and desperately tried to resuscitate him, police and witnesses said.
“I was the first person to respond, but I got there too late,” said the grandad, Robert Battipaglia. “I’ll never be able to live this down ’til the day I die.”
Battipaglia said he performed CPR on the child, who was unresponsive with water coming out of his mouth.
The boy had bolted into the back yard undetected, stacked boxes next to the pool, climbed up and jumped in, police sources said.
“No one was in the back yard to watch him,” Battipaglia said. “I figured [Maria] would have been watching from the open window out back.”
Little Edward was rushed to Richmond University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m.
The Mother Byrd facility is properly licensed and has no violations in the past 24 months, according to the state Office of Children and Family Services.
The drowning happened two days after a 10-year-old Staten Island girl slipped off a jetty at Coney Island in Brooklyn and drowned in the ocean.
Takara McDuffy was found by a beachgoer floating in the ocean.