Records show no fence violations for Gaithersburg pond where 10-year-old boy drowned

Twenty inspections done from September 2012 to January 2014
From The Gazette, reporter Jenn Davis

A developer that owns a pond where a 10-year-old recently drowned has been in compliance with regulations on required safety fencing, according to city of Gaithersburg records obtained by The Gazette.

The pond, off Diamondback Drive, is in the Crown development’s Neighborhood One, which is owned by Westbrook Acquisitions LLC.

None of the 20 previous inspections of the sediment and grading in the Crown neighborhood — from Sept. 20, 2012, to Jan. 7, 2014 — show a violation for a safety fence around pond 1, the site of the drowning, according to John Schlichting, Gaithersburg’s director of planning and code administration.

Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service officials have said that when D’Angelo Jayvon McMullen of Rockville fell through the ice on the pond on Jan. 13 and died, there was only partial fencing.

and:

Schlicting said that since no violations pertaining to the safety fence were recorded in any of the inspections, it is assumed that city inspectors found the fence to be present and up to city code requirements during each of their visits.

Even though the forms show places where inspectors can indicate specific findings about safety fencing, those sections are blank on the records obtained by The Gazette.

In response to requests by The Gazette about when the fencing was inspected, the city provided records that do not clearly show what passed inspection and when.

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