Video from a home security camera may be offered as evidence that a faulty fence at a sensory friendly park for kids with autism may have led to the drowning death of a five-year-old boy.
According to WESH, which viewed the video footage, appears to support the boy's father's story that his son slipped through an opening in a side fence at Senses Park in Kissimmee, Fla., and made his way to a nearby drainage ditch where he drowned.
The video appears to show that the side fence was loosely chained, leaving a gap that allowed five-year-old Arturo Javier Angarita to slip through while he father was attending to his brother.
Arturo’s father, Leonard Angarita Sr. says both of his sons are on the spectrum, and Arturo was mostly non-verbal. Arturo disappeared from the park while his father was tending to the boy’s 6-year-old brother, Leo Jr.
Leonard and Leo Jr. were about 80 yards away on the playground from Arturo when he drowned.
Since Arturo's death, park maintenance has double-padlocked and chained the fence.
WESH talked to Marcus Jackson who was playing with his son on the playground days after Arturo's death. Jackson raised another concern, noting that the park's gate, which was blowing open and closed in the wind, even though it appears to originally have been set up to require a code to get in, and to push a button to open the gate to exit the park.
“Well, I feel like the button, you know it should control the door to open and shut so I feel like they need to fix the button so, you know the kids won't just go in and out of the door,” Jackson told WESH.
Osceola County government owns and operates Senses Park, but has declined comment on the theory that Arturo slipped through a gate that was supposed to be locked tightly.
