Swim teacher in Georgia charged after 4-year-old drowns in deep end of pool during swim lesson

• Officials charged a swim teacher with misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter after a student drowned.
• Police initially declined to charge Lexie Tenhuisen in July, reports say.
• Israel “Izzy” Scott, 4, was found in the deep end of a backyard pool, according to reports.

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Months after a 4-year-old Georgia boy drowned during a swimming lesson, officials have criminally charged his swim instructor.

Lexie Tenhuisen faces a misdemeanor involuntary-manslaughter charge for the drowning death of  Israel “Izzy” Scott in June 2022 after law enforcement initially decided against criminal prosecution, Blavity reported via Yahoo.

Tenhuisen was giving swimming lessons to 10 children in a backyard pool in Hephzibah, Georgia, when the incident occurred, according to a police report People obtained. At some point near the end of the lesson, Scott made his way to the deep end of the pool without Tenhuisen’s knowledge, a July release from the Burke County Sheriff’s Office reads.

Tenhuisen, a North Carolina resident, told police she wasn’t sure how Scott drowned, People reported.

“Tenhuisen claimed that the only thing that she can think of in her mind is that while the kids were swimming, he got a little too close to the drop-off, but she doesn’t remember that because there was just splashing, and she was watching them swim across,” the police report People obtained reads.

Once she realized Scott was still in the pool, she jumped in to save him and began administering CPR along with a parent who was waiting for her child’s lesson to begin, officials said, but Scott later died at a local hospital.

His mother, Dori Scott, was waiting outside the residence when someone approached her car and told her to come to the backyard, according to an interview with the digital publication The Shade Room. 

“I walked in that fence and saw my baby laying on the side of the pool, and I saw some lady doing CPR on him,” she said. “I lost it.”

According to Dori Scott, parents weren’t allowed at Tenhuisen’s swim lessons, local news reported in July.

Jared Williams, the Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney, announced the charges in a December press release. 

“Izzy Scott is not a case. He is not a file on a desk, nor an article in the news. He is a child whose loss has broken the heart of our community. He is a symbol of how we should cherish our little ones and hold them tight,” Williams said in the release.

It’s unclear why Tenhuisen was teaching lessons in Georgia despite residing in North Carolina. Since the incident, she has deleted her professional and personal Facebook accounts and made her Instagram account private.