A Chattanooga man who competed on America’s Got Talent with his R&B trio is facing a first-degree murder charge after his 4-year-old nephew drowned in an apartment complex pool the boy had walked to unsupervised. DeShundre Vinson, 22, was arrested Wednesday and booked into the Hamilton County Jail on bond set as high as $900,000, with a court-appointed public defender now representing him.
The boy drowned on August 16 at a pool on Central Avenue and died five days later from his injuries, according to The Independent. Chattanooga Police Department officers happened to be at the complex responding to an unrelated call around 5:40 p.m. that day when they overheard screaming near the pool area, according to a report from Medium. Officers arrived to find someone already performing CPR on the child before he was taken to a nearby hospital.
Detectives determined Vinson had been responsible for babysitting the boy, his 6-year-old brother, and several other children at the time. Investigators say Vinson allowed the two brothers to walk roughly two-tenths of a mile from the apartment to the pool without adult supervision. Surveillance footage reviewed by police, per the same Medium report, showed the 4-year-old walking from the pool’s edge into deeper water, struggling, and then slipping underwater at a depth of five feet, where he remained submerged for approximately nine minutes before a bystander pulled him out.
Pool Was Marked Off-Limits to Unsupervised Children
The Central Avenue pool where the boy went under was posted with signage stating no lifeguard was on duty and prohibiting children under 14 from swimming without adult supervision, according to police reports cited by Primetimer. Investigators also say Vinson sent messages to the boys’ mother acknowledging both a lack of supervision and a delayed response once the emergency began, though the dossier does not specify the exact content of those messages beyond that acknowledgment. Vinson and the apartment’s leaseholder both moved out of the complex shortly after the drowning, per The Independent’s reporting…