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Camp to continue despite boy’s drowning
By Elise Franco
Austintown
A six-week-long summer camp at Leonard Kirtz School will continue through Friday after the drowning of a 7-year-old boy in the school’s pool.
Larry Duck, superintendent of Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities, said the administration weighed the pros and cons of keeping the camp open after Nathan Kinderdine, of Boardman, drowned Tuesday.
“We knew that people would be thinking a lot about this, and we thought it would be better to have them come back,” he said. “We did it for the sake of the kids too. We wanted to make sure they got to finish out their program.”
Duck said counselors were on hand Wednesday for any student or employee who wanted to talk about the accident.
“A lot of times in public schools we’ll do that, and we’ve found that to be very helpful,” he said.
Duck said the 140 students with developmental disabilities between the ages of 3 and 22 attended the camp this year.
“It’s hard to say if they understood what happened, but I suspect some of them are more aware than others,” he said. “By and large I think a great number were unaware of it.”
Kinderdine was found at the bottom of the school’s pool Tuesday afternoon after he strayed away from the group of students and adults he was with, according to an Austintown police report.
CPR was performed at the scene, and he was pronounced dead at St. Elizabeth Health Center a short time later.
Police said they don’t know for certain how Kinderdine gained access to the pool, but they may have an idea.
The doors were locked from the inside, which means no one on the outside can open them, according to the report.
After checking both the girls’ and boys’ restroom entrances to the pool, police determined that the girls’ entrance closed securely each of eight times the door was opened and closed.
The boys’ door, however, wouldn’t fully latch nine times out of 10 because the door rubbed against the metal door frame as it closed.
It’s possible that door is how Kinderdine got into the pool area, though police and the coroner are still investigating, according to the report.