Today, my next door neighbor’s kids were screaming and being rowdy again. So I slammed my windows shut and ignored the noise. Then my doorbell rang. It was the boy from next door. He cried, “Didn’t you hear me screaming? Help me! Hurry!” His sister hit her head in the pool and drowned. The paramedics said she could have lived if someone had gotten to her sooner. MMT

Comments

Life is too short to be angry.

You can't blame yourself for this, kids scream like that all of the time. You said "again". It's not your fault for not knowing what happened.

Before the wave of people slinging insults at OP comes just like in a lot of these things, if anyone is to be at fault, it is the parents for not supervising their children. Where the hell was a parent?

I don't blame you, and you shouldn't blame yourself either. When I was younger, my parents always told me to never scream while I was playing unless it was an emergency so they would know I was in serious trouble and they would come running. Not all parents taught this, and so those kids were like the boy who cried wolf one too many times. As GabrielG said, where were the parents while they were in the pool?

You're not alone, Anon. There was a case in 1995 where a school bus stopped with its back end hanging over the train tracks. The gates came down and the children were screaming to the bus driver to move, but she had been tuning rowdy kids out for years, so she just ignored them. Like you, an honest mistake that ended badly. Don't blame yourself.

I don't agree with the people that say the OP shouldn't feel guilty - if they don't feel guilty, they're a sociopath. It just needs to become an impetus to do something.

...I'm sorry but this story is just bullshit. 1. Like someone said above, where were the parents? 2. If the kids were home alone, again, why didnt the parents teach them how to deal with emergencies? 3. Wtf did the kid think he was gonna accomplish? If it was a pool at their house, then I'm presuming it would be in their backyard. Did he expect a neighbour to come BURSTING through the gates to their backyard based on some kid screaming? He should've rushed out first to get someone. Again, why didn't the parents teach him this? 4. If it's a pool at a house, then WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THE BOY DO SOMETHING? Honestly, it's not gonna be an olympic swimming pool. How deep could it possibly be that the boy couldn't pull out his sister? If the family owns a POOL, and the boy wasn't knocked out, your saying he didn't know how to swim? And also...if he was too young to do this (honestly, below the age of 7 probably) then again....WHY the HELL would the parents let a kid that young swim unattended in an empty house?? Also, this is all based on the assumption that the sister was a child too. But in the event that she WAS old enough to look after her bro instead of the parents....why the hell didn't SHE teach her bro what to do in emergencies? If he has the intelligence to scream for help and run to a neighbours house, he should know how to call paramedics. Also, this is in NO way your fault.

The girl could of been an older kid and left in charge to watch her little brother. If she was 13 or 14 and he was 5 or 6 theres no way her would of been able to pull her out of the pool by himself.

Screaming in general I understand one ignoring, but the kid screaming for help as he presumably was? Fu*k you. I hope you've now learned a valuable lesson about listening.

#9 they probably already feel bad enough. you don't need to make them feel worse. the way i understood the story is, that OP closed the window because of the screaming children before the accident happened. then the boy screamed for help, but OP couldn't know..

I find it hard to believe that this happened. Especially since the sister supposedly drowned, I doubt that the little boy would have been calm and collected enough to come to the OP's house and explain what had happened. Cool story, though, brah.

^ Maybe he didn't "Calmly" explain it like that. OP just made it easier for us to understand what happened

I believe the sister was older than the brother, since the parents weren't around, so she must've been supervising. For all you or I know, the parents could've gone down to the store for only 15 minutes and left her in his supervision, because, "Hey, what could happen in 15 minutes?". I bet the boy panicked when this happened. When you panic, you don't think straight, so the thought of calling the emergency number might not have proccessed or he didn't know it. So he tried to screm for help. Hell no he wouldn't of been 'calm' about it, #11. The neighbour probably found the full story from paramedics. Btw, OP explained what he said to them. THEN YOU NEED TO COUNT IN THE TIME IS TAKES FOR THE AMBULANCE TO GET THERE. AND if the neighbour knows how to perform CPR.

If that happened to me, I doubt I'd run over to the neighbor just to blame it on them, "Omg ur lyke the reason y lyke my sissy died omggggg."

It's not your fault and for the person who said she should listen next time, get a life. I have screaming kids where I am and I am about to tell them this year to stop screaming because they should only scream when someone is in trouble. if they persist on doing that, no one will come to their aid. Ever hear of the story of the Boy that Cried Wolf?? Go read it!

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