Mother demands answers after 6-year-old son drowns while in foster care

WOOD COUNTY, Ohio (WTVG/Gray News) - A mother says her 6-year-old son drowned while in the temporary custody of Lucas County Children Services, and she is demanding to know how it happened.

Xion Thomas, who had just completed kindergarten, died at Wood County Hospital after he was pulled from a swimming pool at a Bowling Green home on July 30.

He had been placed with an out-of-network foster family.

Mother says she flagged swimming concerns before placement

Xion’s mother, who asked to remain anonymous, said her son had been in foster care since November 2025. She said she was following her case plan and visiting her four children weekly while working to bring them home.

She said she told caseworkers before Xion was ever placed that he could not swim and should not be near swimming pools.

“I want to know what happened. How did he end up in the pool after I warned them? I warned them about my baby around swimming pools — and he still drowned in a swimming pool. That makes no sense to me,” she told WTVG.

911 calls capture frantic rescue attempt

Two 911 calls were made from the Bowling Green home on July 30. In one call, a dispatcher asked how long the child had been underwater.

“Probably like 10, 15 minutes,” the caller responded.

In a second call, a woman performing CPR on Xion told dispatchers: “He was in the pool, and he slipped under. We called 911.”

Dispatchers confirmed that deputies, fire, and EMS were en route.

Mother learned of son’s death at hospital

Xion’s mother said she rushed to Wood County Hospital after learning of the incident. She said a nurse informed her that the foster family was already at Xion’s bedside.

“I asked her if he was alright and she just told me he was gone. She told me he didn’t make it and that they had been working on him for quite a while before he got to the hospital, and when he got there, he didn’t have a heartbeat,” she said.

She described her son as responsible and loving toward his siblings, and said he had recently developed an interest in soccer.

“He’s really strong, and he’s really responsible. He looked out after his siblings really well. He loves sports — he had just gotten into soccer. He just graduated from kindergarten — was going to the first grade,” she said.

Response from Lucas County Children Services

Lucas County Children Services said in a statement that Xion was placed in a home operated by a private foster care agency due to the shortage of foster homes in Lucas County.

Read the full statement from LCCS below.