911 Tape Released in Boy's Drowning

ByABC News
June 19, 2001, 11:22 AM

L O S  A N G E L E S, June 19 -- A distraught Tommy Lee told a 911 dispatcherthat a 4-year-old boy who drowned in his pool wasn't breathing whenhe was found.

In a seven-minute tape released Monday by the Los Angeles CountyFire Department, the former Motley Crue drummer requested anambulance, then stayed on the phone while the dispatcher attemptedto determine whether the boy was breathing.

"There's a big pool party here and no one was paying attentionfor a minute," Lee anxiously told the dispatcher about Saturday'sdrowning of Daniel Karven Veres, who was found floating face downin the shallow end of Lee's pool. The Dangers of Summer

"He's not breathing. He's throwing up but he's not breathing,"Lee said at one point.

"He's not responding," Lee said a moment later.

Then: "He's just, he's just laying there."

Daniel, the son of television producer James Veres and actressUrsula Karven, was a guest at a birthday party for one of Lee's twosons at the musician's home in the mountains above Malibu.

"It was a birthday party like a million other birthday partiesand obviously there wasn't enough help at the pool," Veres, whodidn't attend the party, said Sunday. "It's inexcusable and justamazing to me."

The 911 dispatcher told Lee to turn the vomiting boy on his leftside. After Lee said the boy was not breathing, the dispatcherbegan to instruct him on CPR.

Lee attempted to relay the instructions to people surroundingDaniel, but had difficulty getting control of the others.

"Everybody's pressing on him," Lee said. "There's a bunch of(expletive) people here all, you know, doing their thing so I don'tknow what to (expletive) (unintelligible)."

The boy's death was ruled an accidental drowning.