A 2-year-old boy in the custody of the Department for Children and Families died after he was found unresponsive in an East Montpelier swimming pool, Vermont State Police said Thursday.

Alexander James Lowell-Henry died late Wednesday as he was receiving medical care at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, state police said.

The toddler was in the care of a foster family at the time of his apparent drowning, state police said.

The child was discovered unresponsive in a family pool on Pine Ridge Road at 11 a.m. Wednesday, state police said.

Paramedics performed life-saving measures at the scene, and a medical team was able to establish a heart beat at Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin before the boy was transported to the UVM Medical Center.

State police and DCF continue to investigate the incident.

The boy's death comes three years after the deaths of two young children in DCF care roiled the state and led to agency reforms.


DCF continues to struggle to manage a caseload that has swelled since the 2014 deaths, Schatz said. The agency has 1,300 children in its custody, up from 1,000 in 2014. The figure was 1,400 last year, according to the commissioner.

Much of the increase, Schatz said, is attributable to the state's ongoing opiate epidemic. And children under 5 years old have represented a large portion of the increase, he added.

While the state legislature provided DCF with additional caseworkers in recent years, some caseworkers still have an "excessive" number of children they are tasked with caring for, Schatz said.