The jaw-dropping drone video is all over the news and social media.
It shows a boy struggling to stay afloat in a pond on the East Side of St. Paul. Police dispatched their drone immediately after getting the 911 call from a good Samaritan. The drone assisted officers at the scene who, in the video, pull the boy just before he goes underwater. According to the child’s family, the boy has autism and had wandered away from home unnoticed.
“I understand how serious this situation is as the mom of an autistic child who used to wander,” said Sheletta Brundidge, known as the Autism Mom. “It is scary, and it is frightening. God bless the men and women of the St. Paul Police Department who moved so quickly to save this boy’s life, but this happens all too often.”
According to the American Journal of Public Health, children with autism are 160 times more likely to die from drowning compared to the general pediatric population. The reason is twofold: children with autism lack a cognitive understanding of danger. Additionally, the movement, reflections, temperature changes, and hydrostatic pressure of water provide a deeply soothing sensory input that is very calming to an autistic child whose nervous system is dysregulated.
That’s why Brundidge wants parents of autistic children to know there is a solution that works.
Three of Brundidge’s four children are on the spectrum. Her youngest, Daniel, was a wanderer and even caused her high anxiety while he was in school.
“When he was in fifth grade, he got overstimulated and ran out of the classroom. Nobody could find him and had to call him on the loudspeaker,” Brundidge recalled. Eventually Daniel came out of the spot where he was hiding, but that didn’t eliminate his mom’s anxiety. “They didn't know where he was, and that’s my biggest fear—that he will wander away and run to a pond, a lake, or a body of water of some kind and drown.”
This isn’t a fear Brundidge has at home because she uses interior combination locks on all of the doors in her home that lead outside. When Daniel, now 11, was younger, escaping was a near-daily routine.
“Daniel was a heavy wanderer,” Brundidge explained. “We tried everything: gates, hotel chains, alarms on doors, but by the time the alarm went off, he’d already be halfway down the street.”
Brundidge recalled chasing after Daniel when he snuck out of the garage while his grandfather was watching him. “He was running toward a four-lane highway,” she said.
The breakthrough came when Brundidge installed interior combination door locks—the kind available online at retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair for $30 to $50. The devices feature a 10-digit keypad on the inside of the door alongside a key bypass in case of emergency. Without entering that 6-to-10-digit code, a child cannot open the door from the inside and get out of the house.
Brundidge installed the locks about four years ago and hasn't had an escape since.
Knowing that cost can be a barrier, Brundidge distributes these locks for free to families of children with autism through her nonprofit, Sheletta Makes A Difference.
Generous donations, like the recent $3,000 from Lindus Construction, help pay for the locks. Parents can request a free interior combination lock directly through her website at ShelettaMakesADifference.org to help keep their children safe at home.
