Keep children safe near water
Florida has the highest drowning rate in children
A child drowned on August 17 in a retention pond of an Indianapolis apartment complex.
Ka'Mauri Williams, 3, was reported shortly after 6.45 p.m. as missing at an address at the TGM Avalon Lake. It was soon found in the large retention pond, which covers a large part of the apartment complex. The medical emergency staff provided help until the boy arrived at St. Vincent Hospital. He was declared dead shortly after arrival.
His mother described his death as an accident.
Williams is the third child who drowns in an Indianapolis retention pond in the last two summer. On August 5, 2024, 5-year-old Roby Chacreton drowned in a retention pond in the apartments in Astoria Park in Indianapolis. The 2-year-old Anna Mandanda died three months earlier on May 4 in a pond in the district of governors.
Adults were also found in retention ponds. On July 2, 2025, the Indianapolis police brought back a dead man's body from a retention pond near the pyramids. It is still unclear how this man ended up in the water.
On August 5, a person died in a hospital after the Greenwood fire brigade recovered from an SUV who had joined a retention pond in East Worthsville Road.
Although the law of Indiana walls or fences requires apartments in dormitories, it is not necessary for property owners to build similar obstacles in relation to retention ponds.
According to state law, retention ponds are required in areas that are susceptible to floods. After heavy rain, they capture excess rainwater and reduce the likelihood that it floods and slowing erosion.
The environmental protection authority determines the federal standards how rainwater processing instruments such as retention ponds have to be built, but the agency does not require external modifications such as fences. Instead, local jurisdiction are commissioned to determine these needs for their communities.
The manual for rainwater design and building specifications in Indianapolis in Indianapolis does not require that real estate owners place obstacles in terms of retention ponds, and there is also no such thing as a rainwater intake has to come from a residential building.
The manual requires the storage areas to have a “security bank” – graded areas that extend inwards from the circumference of the pond – 1 foot under the average water level of the pond.
Indystar asked the city whether it was considering changing a zoning regulations to tan the lack of fences to retention ponds.
Dawn Olsen, communication officer of the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, said that they were not aware of the proposed regulations that would deal with this problem, but found that private property owners can install fencing if they are of the opinion that it is necessary.
“If a resident is passionate about this topic, one of the most effective things he can do is to work directly with his HOA or apartment complex. You can work for the installation of fences around retention ponds and thus increase the security for all residents of the neighborhood,” said Olsen.
Olsen gave that a real estate owner, if he decided to install fences, have to make sure to follow the city's fence standards described in ordinances, which enable the city's access to the necessary maintenance.
Indystar turned to the real estate manager of the TGM Avalon Lake for a comment, but had no longer heard at the time of publication.
The proposed state legislation to add pond fences failed
Although the discussion of the security requirements in connection with the ponds of the binding over social media, representatives and senators from Indiana conducted in the Statehouse in 2009.
Former Senator Richard Bray, who represented Martinsville, presented a legislative template that would have made bonds possible to finance the construction of obstacles in terms of existing ponds, and asked the builders to be responsible for the construction of pond barriers in future development.
However, the law was never passed and the discussion about security requirements for retention ponds has not moved much since 2009.
Bray presented the legislation again in 2011, but the law was never taken up and died by a committee.
In 2025, Sen. JD Ford (D-Indianapolis) introduced a legislative template that would require some homeowners' associations to build fences to build retention ponds. It died in the committee.
Ryan Murphy is the communities reporter for Indystar. It can be reached at rhmurphy@indystar.com.