A 16-month-old boy drowned in a lake at a trailer park after opening a locked door and wandering away in his parents’ sleep.
Corey James Holland was found face up in the water by his father Phillip Holland after he woke up to find his son missing in his travel cot.
The tragic accident happened in August 2019 at Lakeside Caravan Park in Winsford, Cheshire, while on a family vacation with the boy’s grandparents.
Two witnesses who saw the baby wandering assumed he was approaching someone or that he was with a family member, heard the Warrington Coroner Court.
The Wirral family, including Corey’s mother, Kimberley Mackenzie, and his three older siblings, had all enjoyed dinner and were watching TV on a pull-out bed before Phillip laid Corey in his travel cot.
In a statement from the father read by Cheshire chief medical examiner Alan Moore, Phillip said he looked after Corey when he put the older children to bed and that he was “soundly asleep”.
He added that the boy would normally sleep in the same room as himself and his partner, but this time the couple fell asleep on the pull-out bed in the living room.
Corey James Holland, only 16 months old, drowned in a tragic incident at Lakeside Caravan Park in Cheshire in August 2019
He said he wish he could change things.
Phillip woke up around 8:00 am on August 22nd to find Corey was not in his bed and that one of the trailer doors next to his room was ajar.
Phillip said he checked that the trailer door was locked and that the door was locked before going to sleep Family didn’t know he knew how to unlock it.
After seeing that Corey was not in his bed, Phillip woke Kimberley up before the family searched desperately for him.
According to his testimony, Phillip asked a woman if she saw a baby and she said she did.
Phillip then asked her why she hadn’t picked up the 16 month old because he was “just a baby” and she replied, “I don’t know”.
Soon he found Corey face up near a jetty in the water and hurried to pull him out.
The court heard a witness see a baby in pajamas walking between the trailers around 8:20 a.m., but assumed someone was watching him.
Around 8:30 a.m., another witness – who Phillip spoke to on the day of the incident – said she saw a toddler near one of the trailers by the lake, but couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.
She said she assumed she was “running towards someone” or one of the trailers and said it was “only a few seconds” when she saw him when she decided to make a cup of tea.
The resident of the trailer park said she heard screams and saw a man, a woman and three other children “walking in different directions.”
She asked the man if he was looking for someone and he said ‘yes the baby, the baby’.
The woman said in her testimony that she later heard a man scream, “Help me, help me,” and when she looked out her kitchen window, she was able to walk up and carry something on his shoulder.
She said that by this point she knew “something terrible had happened” because the baby did not seem to move and she called an ambulance.
Warrington Coroner’s Court heard the little boy manage to unlock the trailer door and run away before his father found him face up in the water
The woman said she was “devastated” when she discovered later that day that the baby had died.
The court heard a site maintenance manager also perform CPR before an ambulance crew arrived and took over.
An ambulance crew rushed to the scene and began CPR on Corey, who was in cardiac arrest.
The crew then began performing advanced life support, which included opening the airways, giving oxygen, and administering drugs such as adrenaline.
Corey was admitted to Leighton Hospital in Crewe, but senior paramedic James Fowles told the court that his heart was not beating in the ambulance or when he arrived at the hospital.
Doctors and paramedics took care of the resuscitation, but despite their best efforts, Corey was pronounced dead at 10:14 a.m.
Cheshire Police Department Detective Inspector Stuart York told the investigation that he had found no evidence of third party involvement or suspicious circumstances.
Det Insp York added that it was not known whether Corey walked or fell in the water from his own “science” as no one saw him near the water.
He said, “I am pleased that the evidence pointed to a tragic accident.”
At the hearing, Corey’s grandfather, James Holland, asked the coroner to see if an on-site defibrillator could have done anything.
Corey was taken from the trailer park to Leighton Hospital in Crewe, but Senior Paramedic James Fowles told the court that his heart was not rhythmic either in the ambulance or when he arrived at the hospital
Mr. Moore said after paramedics’ evidence that a defibrillator would not have worked because Corey did not have a shockable heart rhythm.
Mr Holland added that if there is no defibrillator on site, it must be as it is a family trailer park.
He added, “We don’t want anyone else to go through what this family went through.”
At the end of the investigation, coroner Alan Moore found that the medical cause of death was “consistent with drowning.”
Mr. Moore said, “I have concluded that Corey died as a result of an accident. A very tragic accident.
“I want to say how incredibly brave you were today, and not just today, because I know you lived with it for a long time.
‘You are a lovely family and I can see that.’
The coroner said he will also write a report to the “right people” at the trailer park and local council highlighting what happened, but stressed that an investigation has “no power” to change things, but it does can highlight.
