Push for drowning prevention grows nationwide

Doctors, nonprofits rallying resources as death rates remain high for U.S. children.

- BY MIKE STOBBE

SPENCER PLATT Getty Images A CHILD jumps into a newly opened public pool in Harlem, N.Y., in June 2025.

Doctors and others are sounding an alarm: More U.S. children have been drowning in recent years.

"When drowning occurs, seconds matter," said Dr. Rohit Shenoi, the lead author of a recent American Academy of Pediatrics warning. "Quick rescue and resuscitation can mean the difference between life, death and lifelong disability."

About 4,000 to 5,000 Americans drown each year. Most are adults who die in natural bodies of water such as lakes, ponds or oceans.

But statistically speaking, drowning is a much larger danger to children. It's the No. 1 cause of death for kids ages 1 to 4, and one of the top killers of children ages 5 to 14. The drowning rate is higher for white kids in the younger group, but much higher for Black, American Indian and Alaska Native children in the older group.

Drownings of very young children sometimes occur in bathtubs. But most, like Stewie Leonard's, occur in swimming pools.

Family tragedy inspires foundation

The Stew Leonard's grocery chain offers a Disneylike shopping experience, featuring food-promoting animatronic characters like a dancing banana, a mooing cow and singing avocados.

But several of its stores also have an animatronic creature that seems out of place: a life-jacketed duck named Stewie who sings about how not to drown.

The duck is named for the son of Stew Leonard, the grocery chain's chief executive. The boy was 21 months old when he drowned during a family vacation on the island of St. Martin in 1989.

More than a dozen adults and kids had gathered at a birthday party for Stewie's sister, who was turning 3.

Stew was outside hanging balloons and his wife was inside baking a cake.