ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 7, 1996 TAG: 9605070051
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER
A 4-year-old Christiansburg girl who fell in a farm pond Sunday and was partially revived after more than an hour under water died Monday morning, according to one of her doctors.
Christiansburg rescue workers were able to restore Jaimee Deihm's heartbeat, but her body was too weak to survive, even on life support.
Jaimee walked to the pond from her home in an Old Farm Village apartment in the 1600 block of Simpson Road with two older girls ages 10 and 12, according to Montgomery County Sheriff Doug Marrs. The pond is on private property behind a steel-post gate.
Three other children were already at the site. None knew how to swim, Marrs said.
Jaimee lost her balance and fell in at the water's edge, Marrs said, but the bank dropped off sharply at that point to a depth of about 20 feet. The older children used a stick to reach out toward the drowning child, but Jaimee was apparently too weak to grasp it, he said.
Marrs said the Christiansburg Police Department got the 911 call at about 12:45 p.m. and sent officers to the pond.
Sgt. Hank Epperly and Officer John Altizer of Christiansburg Police Department were first on the scene, according to Marrs. The men pulled off their gun belts and dived in the pond to search for the girl. Dive teams also joined the search. Epperly found Jaimee under a submerged tree about an hour and 10 minutes after she fell in, Marrs said.
"Those officers did one heck of a job," he said.
Dr. Hugh Clark, of Carilion Community Hospital of the Roanoke Valley, where Jaimee was taken after initial treatment at Columbia Montgomery Regional Hospital, said even though her heart was restarted, the odds were against survival.
"The heart in children is so healthy, you can often get it started again," Clark said. "But she would have been neurologically devastated either way."
The human heart can function after being without oxygen for as long as 30 minutes; and, in Jaimee's case, more than an hour. But it only takes five to eight minutes without air before the brain suffers permanent injuries, he said.
Sometimes when a person falls through ice into extremely cold water, the cold can protect the body and its organs. Clark said the water was not cold enough Sunday to offer Jaimee any protection.
Marrs said the drowning was accidental and no charges will be filed.
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB