BELL CANYON : Sisters Hospitalized After Pool Accident

A 15-year-old Taiwanese girl who was visiting her aunt and uncle in Bell Canyon was in critical condition Wednesday night and her 12-year-old sister was in serious condition after they were pulled from the bottom of a back-yard pool.

Shi Ching Huang was unconscious when she was taken to Humana Hospital-West Hills in the San Fernando Valley after the 7:40 p.m. accident Tuesday.

Her younger sister, Shih Wen Huang, was the first one rescued after the two were discovered face down in the water. She was in serious condition with a good chance for full recovery, a spokeswoman at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles said.

Neither of the girls knew how to swim, said Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Daniel Coons.

“Every year we have accidents with people who range from infants up through old people who fall in pools and drown,” he said.

The girls were floating on rafts in the pool under the supervision of their aunt, Gloria Liyu Chin Lee, when Lee left briefly to tend to her infant inside the house, Coons said.

Lee told officers she was gone only a short time when she returned to find the two girls at the bottom of the pool.

She tried to bring the girls to the surface but found they were too heavy for her, Coons said. While she ran to a neighbor’s house for help, her husband, William Lee, arrived home and discovered the girls in the pool.

Lee pulled the younger girl out first and his wife began cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Then he rescued the older girl. A neighbor, Terry Brown, performed CPR on the second girl while Lee called for help.