Hopefully, you and your family had an enjoyable and relaxing Easter weekend. Maybe you spent yesterday attending church, going out to Easter brunch, relaxing with family and friends, or even holding your own Easter egg hunt in your backyard for your children.

Unfortunately, one eastern Valley homeowner had an unexpectedly disturbing Easter Sunday. The homeowner walked outside to find a dead body at the bottom of a backyard swimming pool.

Metro Police responded to a call around 3:45pm yesterday in the 2300 block of Abarth Street. The home is near the second tee of the Desert Rose Golf Course just off Sahara Avenue. Firefighters pulled the man from the water and subsequently pronounced him dead. Authorities believe the victim was in his 50s and had been in the pool for several hours.

How or why the man got into the swimming pool is a mystery. Neither the homeowner nor the neighbors could identify the victim, and Metro Police did not see any apparent signs of trauma or struggle which would indicate that a violent crime had taken place. The pool area is fenced, and police are trying to determine if the man entered the backyard through one of two gates or climbed the fence to gain access to the swimming pool.

The silver lining to this situation is that the homeowner is less likely to be held accountable for the man’s death in a wrongful death lawsuit than would be the case if the victim were a child. The law generally views child swimming pool drownings differently than adult drownings, because it is assumed that young kids aren’t mature enough to avoid the dangerous temptation of entering an unsupervised pool. In any case, the homeowner’s pool fencing provides some measure of protection against lawsuits related to any swimming pool drownings.