Boy, 7, dragged to bottom of Pasir Ris condo pool for 5 mins allegedly by 'suction force', admitted to ICU

While swimming in the jacuzzi at a condominium, a seven-year-old boy was apparently dragged to the bottom of the pool, completely submerged underwater.

The cause of the incident was allegedly a malfunctioning pump, which resulted in a "suction force" that pulled the child to the bottom of the pool.

It took his mother and two other adult residents to pull the boy out.

By the time they pulled him to the surface, the child had been underwater for over five minutes and was not breathing.

The boy was subsequently resuscitated and taken to the intensive care unit (ICU) at KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH).

He remained in hospital for three weeks.

Jacuzzi 1m deep

The incident took place at 1:20pm on Feb. 22, 2025 at Seastrand Condominium in Pasir Ris.

His mother, 43-year-old Jessica Kim, told Mothership that her son had been in the jacuzzi before his swimming class at 1:30pm.

"The jacuzzi is 1m deep, and my son is taller than that. And my son is good at swimming, because he has been going for lessons."

"So I didn't worry about him," she said.

She sat on a nearby bench and watched him swim.

When he disappeared underneath the surface, she assumed he was just playing in the water, she said.

She approached the pool, but it "seemed quite long", so she told him to come out of the water.

"But it was so quiet," she said. "And I felt, 'Is something wrong?'"

Worried, she went closer and saw him on the jacuzzi floor.

But when she jumped in and tried to pull him out, he seemed unusually heavy.

She then shouted for help.

Trapped underwater

Despite her best efforts, she was unable to pull him out of the water.

"When I knelt down [to pull him out], the water kept going into my mouth and nose," she said.

Two residents quickly arrived at the pool to help.

It required the effort of all three to pull the child to the surface.

By that time, he had been submerged for over five minutes.

He was also unconscious and no longer breathing.

A nurse who'd heard the commotion came down and began to perform CPR on him, but when he failed to respond, Kim started to "scream like crazy".

"I thought he was dead," she recalled.

The sound of her cries alerted her husband, who came down to the pool to investigate.

Refusing to give up, he performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on his son.

The child finally began to breathe again, and an ambulance arrived around two minutes later.

In response to Mothership's queries, the Singapore Civil Defence Force confirmed that they received a call for assistance and conveyed one person to the hospital.

Suspicions

While waiting outside the emergency room at the hospital, Kim's neighbour came by to visit.

He'd been one of the passers-by who helped tug her son to the surface, but she had not recognised him at the time in her panic.

"And then he told me, he [had experienced] something weird in the pool," she said.

While in the water, he noticed a "suction force" coming from the water filter on the bottom of the pool.

So, he broke the water filter cover, and managed to tug the boy out.

"At the time, I didn't know, I just wondered why he was so heavy," Kim said.

Separately, a doctor later pointed out bruises and lacerations on the boy's abdomen.

"I didn't see it before," she said.

Suction trap effect

The bruise might have been caused by the "suction force" that trapped her son underwater, Kim alleged.

While she is unsure as to the cause, she and her husband believe that it was a case of suction entrapment.

This is a rare occurrence in which the drain of a pool causes suction forces that trap a swimmer at the bottom of the pool.

It is caused by "mismanagement of a pool's circulation system", according to the UK Swimming Teachers' Association.

Kim suspects that the problem was related to a malfunctioning water pump.

The pump next to the jacuzzi had been under maintenance for the past six months, she said.

It had underwent maintenance just two hours before the accident.

"I saw [the maintenance] all the time, and was wondering why are they fixing it all the time? So they knew there was some problem with the pump. But before, they never informed us," she added.

Both the pump and the jacuzzi were later shut down.

Condition

The pools have since been re-opened, although the jacuzzi's pumps remain shut off.

In a Mar. 5 circular, the condominium's management assessed the pools as safe for use.

Two hours before the incident, the pool contractor had been conducting routine cleaning, and the sump cover had been intact at the time.

The circular did not mention what happened to the sump cover, and no specific explanation was given.

Searching for answers

Recalling her son's stay in the ICU, Kim said he had to be intubated and undergo an MRI.

"He had the tube, so he couldn't talk," Kim said, her voice cracking.

Six months on, the child still bears large scars on his abdomen and thighs, where he was allegedly sucked into the drain.

Kim herself has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and is on medication.

She added that the condo management never apologised.

When they submitted a claim for damages, including the child's scar treatment, they allegedly "delayed with promises of an internal investigation".

The condo management allegedly said the couple would have to hold the condo developer accountable instead.

She and her husband now intend to bring the condo management to court for negligence.

Until now, no root cause has been given for the incident, the couple claimed.

"If they don't know the root cause how can they say it is safe?" Kim's husband asked rhetorically.

A representative for the condo management declined to comment in response to Mothership's query back in February.

More recently, the condo management did not respond to two subsequent queries either.

Top image from Jessica Kim