10-year-old drowning victim from Elgin

The 10-year-old boy who drowned Sunday in Jericho Lake in Montgomery was from Elgin, according to Fox Valley Park District officials.

The name of the boy was still being withheld Tuesday while local police agencies investigated his death.

The Sugar Grove Fire Protection District responded to an emergency call to Jericho Lake Park just after 6 p.m. for a missing boy last seen in the water. The boy, a student in Elgin Area School District U-46, had been visiting the park with his parents, siblings and other relatives. The boy’s siblings lost sight of him and were initially unsure whether he had left the water where they were swimming, according to the park district.

The Montgomery Fire Department Water Rescue Team and the Aurora Fire Department Dive Team assisted Sugar Grove in the rescue operation.

Sugar Grove Assistant Chief Gary Baum said when his department initially arrived, eight minutes after the call, members put on buoyancy suits and started to feel around with their feet. When the divers arrived, they were hooked to safety lines and searched by feel in a zigzag pattern.

Rescue divers found the boy in 12 feet of water about 25 feet from the shore after a search that lasted just more than half an hour, according to Baum.

“We didn’t find him too far from where his parents last saw him,” Baum said.

Paramedics rushed the boy to Provena Mercy Medical Center in Aurora, where he was pronounced dead.

Officials from the Kane County Coroner’s office would not comment on the boy’s cause of death early Tuesday. Jericho Lake is a 20-acre fishing and boating lake within Jericho Lake Park. Park district officials said swimming is prohibited in the lake and signs to that effect are prominently posted. But Jeff Long, public relations manager of the park district, said the water is not particularly dangerous with a current or undertow. Swimming is primarily restricted to avoid disrupting people who are fishing, according to Long.

The lake has no lifeguard supervision.

Ÿ Daily Herald staff writer Eric Peterson contributed to this report.