FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A heartbroken mother exclusively spoke with Local 10 News Wednesday, just a few days after her child drowned inside a Fort Lauderdale pool.
Figenie Dugard says she is devastated after losing her 8-year-old son, Ryan Amichette, after he was found by a neighbor at the bottom of a pool of his home around 6 p.m. Monday, near the 1100 block of Northwest Fourth Avenue.
She says he was the most loving child.
“‘Mommy, let me kiss you, mommy.’ He kissed me three times. I love you. He gave me a hug,” a tearful Dugard told Local 10 News.
Ryan was a third grader at Northside Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale.
His mother said he never made it home from school Monday afternoon and was found face down inside a neighbor’s pool.
That neighbor called 911 for help when he made the devastating discovery.
“I just woke up and looked outside. There’s a little kid at the bottom of my pool,” a neighbor told 911.
Once medics arrived, they performed CPR on Ryan and rushed him to Broward Health Medical Center, where he would not survive.
Dugard says she asked a woman she knew in the neighborhood to pick up Ryan from school as she had to work.
The woman told her that she saw Ryan with some friends at a Walgreens nearby. She called out to him, and he either didn’t hear her or didn’t want to go, so she apparently left him.
“She told me, ‘I don’t pick up Ryan, I go in the office.’ I told them I come back, I go looking for my son,” said Dugard.
Dugard and her family searched for Ryan and were told he was found in a neighbor’s pool.
They went to the hospital where they were told that Ryan didn’t make it. Her heart is now filled with pain as she’s forced to bury her youngest child.
“This is my favorite child,” said Dugard.
Questions linger as to the circumstances leading to Ryan’s presence in the pool and whether he was accompanied by friends at the time.
Authorities are treating the incident as an accident, but Fort Lauderdale police opened a death investigation on Monday as it remains unclear as to how Ryan was able to enter the backyard of the home with the pool and if he was any of his friends at the time of the incident.
Anyone with information on the case is urged to call the FLPD at 954-828-5700 or Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.
Ryan’s family has started a GoFundMe account to help with his “homecoming” and burial expenses. Click here for more information.