Autistic Blaine girl's body found in pond

Rescue personnel recovered the 5-year-old's body just 2½ hours after she wandered from her Blaine home.

By Joy Powell, Star Tribune

Last update: June 21, 2007 - 11:28 PM

A frantic search ended in grief for the family of a 5-year-old autistic girl who wandered out of her Blaine home just after 1 p.m. Thursday.

The body of Kaylie Dickerson, daughter of Darrin and Anissa Dickerson, was recovered about 2½ hours later from a holding pond across the street from her family's home on Vermillion Court NE., near Quail Creek Parkway.

Kaylie's body was submerged among some cattails, said Blaine Police Chief David Johnson. Her parents had taken "all reasonable precautions" to keep her from wandering off, he said, yet she got out of her family's house and made her way to the pond 400 to 500 yards away.

"It's just a terrible accident," Johnson said. The family had added security safeguards to their home, the chief said, but "nothing in the world is 100 percent absolute."

Rescuers from the Spring Lake Park-Blaine-Mounds View Fire Department recovered Kaylie's body from the pond, one of several within a stone's throw of her home.

Johnson said the girl's mother had noticed she was missing within minutes of her leaving the house and called 911. Fifty people, including rescue personnel and neighbors, searched for the child. They soon found her small pillow near the edge of the pond, which is on private property and ringed by large homes just north of Pioneer Park.

About 6:30 p.m., as grieving neighbors looked on, emergency workers carried Kaylie's tiny body on a backboard and tucked it into an ambulance, where her parents were allowed to spend some time alone with her body before the Anoka County coroner's office took it away.

It's not the first time an autistic child has died in a pond in Blaine. On Aug. 2, 2005, 4-year-old Olivia Leigh Carsen drowned after wandering into another Blaine pond.

Earlier this week, Benjamin Heil, a 7-year-old autistic boy, was found dead in a pond less than a quarter-mile from his home in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis. He had disappeared a few days before.

Dr. Barbara Luskin, consulting psychologist for the Autism Society of Minnesota, said many children with autism spectrum disorder are especially attracted to sensory things, including water. Young autistic children in particular may have "very little sense of danger and might enjoy the feeling of walking in water without realizing that they won't be able to breathe if it goes over their head," she said.

With more subdivisions being built with holding ponds, all parents, and particularly those of autistic children, should be aware of the danger, she said.

Johnson said it would be impractical to fence off such ponds. Regardless of all the precautions that people take to protect children, he said, "the opportunities for tragedy occur despite our best efforts."

Joy Powell • 612-673-7750 • jpowell@startribune.com

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