MONTREAL – On the day 4-year-old Hila Zohar was buried, her family had angry words for lifeguards who they say didn’t act quickly enough.
Hila Zohar was found Tuesday afternoon at the bottom of the Côte St. Luc municipal pool. She was taken off life-support on Wednesday. “I lost one of the most beautiful girls ever,” Hila’s mother, Edit Zohar, said Thursday. Zohar said she believes the death could have been avoided if lifeguards at the pool, on Mackle Rd. at the corner of Parkhaven Ave., had done their jobs properly. “I’m very upset about the pool; about the way they act,” Zohar said. “They were so scared, so panicked. They didn’t do anything.” Montreal police are investigating the drowning, but so far there is nothing to suggest that something criminal occurred, Constable Olivier Lapointe said. The Quebec coroner’s office is also investigating. Zohar was at the pool that day, but at the time of the incident wasn’t close enough to see what happened. Zohar said the family got a phone call Thursday from a witness who said Hila was pushed into the pool by another child with whom she had been playing on the deck. Zohar said that according to the witness, the girl saw that Hila wasn’t coming up to the surface, so she called her mother. She said the girl’s mother pulled Hila’s lifeless body from the shallow end of the pool and placed her on the pool deck. “She just left her there, and ran away because she was scared,” Zohar said. “When the lifeguards saw a dead girl lying there, they evacuated the pool. They stood around her for a few minutes and they didn’t do anything. I don’t know when they decided to call 911.” Hila did not know how to swim. Zohar said lifeguards should have seen Hila fall in, and they should have seen her at the bottom of the pool because it wasn’t as crowded as usual, since it was a cloudy day. “She was being watched by a friend, but we didn’t worry so much because we knew she wouldn’t go anywhere near the water,” Zohar said. “She’s terrified of the water.” The family friend had apparently looked away for a few minutes because her daughter lost a sandal. Zohar arrived at her daughter’s side after an alarm sounded to evacuate the pool. Daycare worker Yaëlle Bouhana-Ostrofsky, 35, who was at the pool to pick up her children, said she administered CPR to Hila because lifeguards were too slow to act. “I got there and I heard screams, and I heard someone say, ‘She drowned.’ I saw the girl lying on the ground, and nobody was giving her CPR,” Bouhana-Ostrofsky said. “They were standing around, confused. ... They didn’t know what to do. “She was unconscious. She was white as a ghost. Her belly was up, probably because of the water (that was inside).” She said one of the lifeguards helped roll Hila onto her side when she was throwing up during CPR. David Taveroff, director of parks and recreation for Côte St. Luc, presented a different version of events. “We now have witnesses that have told us the staff performed CPR,” he said Thursday. Zohar estimates it took 20 minutes for an ambulance to arrive from the time Hila was pulled out of the pool, in part because lifeguards didn’t call 911 right away. Records from Urgences Santé, the public corporation that runs Montreal and Laval’s ambulances, show a call came in at 5:21 p.m. and an ambulance arrived at 5:33. Côte St. Luc volunteer first responders, who were alerted by Urgences Santé, were at the pool by 5:24. They, too, administered CPR. *Ambulance workers reportedly administered adrenaline into the girl’s heart, and succeeded in getting it to beat on its own, Urgences Santé spokesperson Benoît Garneau said. He said paramedics try to respond to a Priority 1 emergency within 10 minutes, but a 12-minute response time isn’t worrisome.* “It was a reasonable time, considering the high number of calls we had at that time,” Garneau said. “It’s bit longer than usual, but you can’t forget that we work with first responders, who were there (quickly).” Eti Ohayon, a friend of the Zohars, said that when paramedics tried to take Hila away on a stretcher through the pool’s back gate, they were delayed because pool staff could not find the key to unlock it. Zohar said she could not control herself as she watched people administer first aid to her daughter. “I panicked,” she said. “I was screaming, and I was screaming so much that one of the police officers took me by force and brought me to one of the rooms of the pool.” Reached in Wisconsin, where he was attending a business meeting, Côte St. Luc Mayor Anthony Housefather said Thursday the incident is under investigation, but that he believes the lifeguards acted professionally. “Our staff is highly trained,” he said. “Every staff is required to have National Lifeguard certification, which is not the case in many pools on the island.” Housefather said that for the rest of the summer, the pool will increase the number of lifeguards on duty. In addition, the pool’s manager and the city’s manager of recreation will also be on the pool deck “for the next while,” Housefather said. “We’re doing this to reassure people,” he said. “I don’t want people to think Côte St. Luc’s pool is unsafe. It’s just as safe as any pool on the island.” He said that before the drowning, the city received few complaints about safety at the pool. “I don’t think it’s fair, until I have done my investigation, to conclude that the lifeguards aren’t doing their job. It’s just not right,” he said. Housefather said the city has called in grief counsellors to work with the staff; he also conveyed his sympathies to the Zohar family. Bouhana-Ostrofsky isn’t reassured about the pool’s safety. “I’ll never send my kids back to that pool,” she said. Hila was treated at Ste. Justine Hospital, but was mostly brain-dead by the time she was admitted. About 150 people attended Hila’s funeral Thursday afternoon at Paperman & Sons funeral home. The Côte St. Luc pool was open Wednesday, but Housefather it was closed Thursday afternoon out of respect for Hila. Ohayon said the family is hoping to speak with the mother of the child who reportedly pushed Hila in the pool. They are asking anyone who saw the incident to come forward. Meanwhile, an 11-year-old girl was fished out of the bottom of a municipal pool in Longueuil about 1:30 p.m. The girl is visiting from Haiti and staying with family in the area. After she dove in and hadn’t come back up after slightly less than a minute, a lifeguard brought her up to the pool deck. She had a weak pulse and was having difficulty breathing, so lifeguards performed CPR. The girl was breathing on her own and doing better by the time an ambulance arrived. As of 3 p.m., she was declared out of danger, said Longueuil police Constable Dominic Arseneault. [email protected] © Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
