Ojai Valley News Blog

Fillmore boy dies while feeding ducks

By Lenny Roberts
Officials have released the identity of the 4-year-old boy who died Sunday while feeding the ducks at Lake Casitas.

According to Sheriff’s Capt. Ross Bonfiglio, Mason Dollar, of Fillmore, apparently fell into the water, possibly just after a flock of ducks took flight. The boy had been feeding the birds with the 8-year-old son of a friend of the boy’s mother. Dollar’s mother had also taken two other children on the outing. The boy’s death has been ruled accidental. 

“This is very, very tragic,” Bonfiglio said. ”We know it doesn’t take very long for this type of thing to happen. How quickly they can occur.”

Both mothers and their children were reportedly in the immediate area of where the boy went into the water, but no one heard him. Bonfiglio said rescue workers in the helicopter  located the boy about 15 feet deep in the water in the area where he was last seen. The dock begins near the bait shop and restaurant just past the chain-link fence where kayaks are stored.

Renate Brown had gone to the lake to pick up her 17-year-old son, Troy, who was on a fishing trip.

“I saw the helicopter drop off two divers and then land in the parking lot,” Brown said. Brown added there were people in boats and walking the shoreline in search of the missing boy.

“About 10 minutes later, one of the divers said, ‘I’ve got him’ and we watched them pull him out of the water. His mother was screaming. She was hysterical. They did CPR on him for quite a while and then loaded him into the ambulance. It was terrible. I had a chill go up my spine when they pulled him out. It’s every parent’s nightmare.”

Senior Deputy Medical Examiner James Baroni confirmed Tuesday the boy’s death was due to asphyxia by drowning.

When the boy first went missing, it was feared he might have been kidnapped because a vehicle was seen leaving the area at the same time.

Bonfiglio said that speculation proved false, and the vehicle’s departure was completely unrelated.