A group of 11 local neighborhood children, ages 6 to 14, were dropped off by a parent at the Mount Baldy area of the park for an afternoon of swimming on July 29th. Mount Baldy, the tallest sand dune in the park, is fronted by a popular, unguarded, day use beach and was occupied by several hundred other visitors at the time. By all accounts, several of the unsupervised children were engaged in horseplay in the water on a sandbar approximately 40 to 60 feet from the beach. The water in the area is three- to four-feet deep and was flat calm. At some point, the 11-year-old victim, a non-swimmer, probably stepped off the sandbar into water that was five- to six-feet deep and drowned. It’s not known how long it took before other children in the group noticed that she was missing and called for help. Numerous bystanders responded, formed a spontaneous line search, and quickly found her. They called for help and started resuscitation efforts. NPS rangers and a boat from the United States Coast Guard were on scene within five minutes of receipt of the 911 call. The girl was transported by the Coast Guard to Michigan City and taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The National Park Service and officers from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources are jointly investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.
