After almost losing her child, local mother supports drowning prevention bills

A Florida lawmaker is hoping to save lives with a series of bills aimed at drowning prevention.

In 2025, 119 children drowned, according to the Florida Department of Children and Families. Lawmakers believe these new bills, if passed, could reduce those numbers.

Shakilya Lewis sure hopes so. Her 7-year-old Brandon Green Jr., also known as BJ, survived a near drowning when he was just 3 years old. Lewis said he was visiting a family member’s home and was left unsupervised. She said a backyard camera captured the incident.

“He was just throwing toys in and out of the water, running in and out of the house with the toys,” Lewis said. “Eventually he started jumping in after the toys and swimming back to the wall. That last time he may have jumped in too far, and he couldn’t get back to the wall. His uncle came home and found him face down and proceeded to start CPR.”

Lewis said BJ was in a coma for a week and that when he woke up, they faced a new reality. Her once bubbly, talkative 3-year-old had a serious brain injury, and all she could think of was how this happened and how accidents like this can be prevented.

“They put him in a medically induced coma because his brain was, he was seizing, and his brain was all over the place. Nothing was normal, and finally he woke up like a week later,” she said. “All of the situations are different. Yes, but the thing that’s not different is that there is an adult around and that maybe their doors don’t have locks on them, or there aren’t alarms on the doors, or maybe the pool doesn’t have a fence, a self-locking fence.”

Florida State Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith noticed those details, too.

“Current Florida law says that all new residential swimming pool builds need to have one of five pool safety features installed in order to be compliant with the pool safety act passed in the year 2000,” he said.

Those residential pool safety options require backyard pools constructed in the year 2000 or later must meet at least one of these requirements: a fence or gate, an approved pool cover, an exit alarm on doors and windows near pool, a self-closing, self-latching device with a release mechanism on windows and doors near pool or a swimming pool alarm.

“The current law has a loophole because only those residential swimming pools were built after the law was passed in the year 2000 are required to have one of these pool safety features installed,” Smith said.

Smith’s proposed bill would bring older pools up to code if the homes are ever sold. But he’s not stopping there. Smith has filed and co-introduced four different bills aimed at drowning prevention.

One bill would add requirements for pool safety at vacation rentals, another will address drowning prevention education, and the other expands the swimming lesson voucher program.

Lewis said she kept track of the 119 child drownings in 2025, so she is relieved that these bills were filed and thankful her son’s accident can serve as another reminder of how important this is.

“A lot of kids don’t make it when it comes to drownings. And I think that we’re blessed because we don’t take it for granted that other parents are holding pictures of their kids, but I still get to hold him every night,” Lewis said.

The bills still have to move through several committees during this legislative session.