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- A swim instructor has been charged with misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter after one of her students drowned.
- Police initially declined to charge Lexie Tenhuisen in July, reports say.
- Four-year-old Israel “Izzy” Scott was found in the deep end of a backyard pool, according to reports.
Months after a 4-year-old Georgia boy drowned during a swimming lesson, his swim instructor has been criminally charged.
Lexie Tenhuisen faces a misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter charge in the drowning death of Israel “Izzy” Scott in June 2022 after law enforcement initially decided against criminal prosecution, Blavity reported via Yahoo.
Tenhuisen was giving swimming lessons to 10 children in a backyard pool in Hephzibah when the incident occurred, according to a police report obtained by People. At some point near the end of the lesson, Scott made his way to the deep end of the pool without Tenhuisen’s knowledge, a July release from the Burke County Sheriff’s Office reads.
Tenhuisen, a North Carolina resident, told police she wasn’t sure how Scott drowned, People reported.
“Tenhuisen claimed that the only thing that she can think of in her mind is that while the kids were swimming, he got a little too close to the drop off, but she doesn’t remember that because there was just splashing, and she was watching them swim across,” the police report obtained by People reads.
Once she realized Scott was still in the pool, she jumped in to save him and began administering CPR along with a parent who was waiting for her child’s lesson to begin, officials said, but Scott later died at a local hospital.
His mother, Dori Scott, was waiting outside the residence when someone approached her car and tearfully told her to come to the backyard, according to an interview with digital publication The Shade Room.
“I walked in that fence and saw my baby laying on the side of the pool, and I saw some lady doing CPR on him,” she said. “I lost it.”
According to Scott, parents weren’t allowed at Tenhuisen’s swim lessons, local news reported in July.
Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jared Williams announced the charges in a December press release.
“Izzy Scott is not a case. He is not a file on a desk, nor an article in the news. He is a child whose loss has broken the heart of our community. He is a symbol of how we should cherish our little ones and hold them tight,” Williams said in the release.
It’s unclear why Tenhuisen was instructing lessons in Georgia despite being a North Carolina resident. Since the incident, she has deleted her professional and personal Facebook accounts, and placed her Instagram account on private.
