Apartments use locked gates, wristbands to keep nonresidents out of pools

Buttonwood Tree property manager Sharon Priddy shuddered as she reflected on the drowning of a 17-year-old boy in one of the swimming pools at Horizons East earlier this month.

The teen did not live at Horizons, 505 N. Rock Road, but he and three teenage girls managed to get over the fence after the pool was closed for the night. He drowned early on the morning of July 1, and his friends fled without calling 911.

He was found at the bottom of the pool by a maintenance man who arrived later that morning to open the pool for the day.

“That’s my worst nightmare,” Priddy said of someone drowning at her apartment complex, which is at 9211 E. Harry, just west of Webb Road.

When she learned of the drowning at Horizons East, she said, her first reaction was, “Oh, my goodness.”

Wichita police have not said how the teens were able to get into the enclosed outdoor pool, but residents said it appeared they used pool furniture to help them climb over the fence.

Local apartment complexes utilize a variety of measures to control access to their outdoor swimming pools — yet managers and leasing agents said they know that won’t necessarily stop non-residents from getting to the water if they’re determined.

Fences. Gates. Security codes. Surveillance cameras. Pass cards. Wristbands.

“You can’t prevent people from hopping the fence, unfortunately,” said Jessica Cody, property manager at Chisholm Lake Apartments, 3450 N. Ridgewood, which is southeast of Oliver and 37th Street North. “We are lucky and have not had visitors that should not be here.”

But that hasn’t been the case elsewhere.

“Oh, yeah — all the time,” Glenda Flores, property manager of Village Park at Cedarbrooke, said when asked whether people who don’t live at the complex use the pool without permission. “During hours and after hours.”

It happened so often last year that additional security measures were taken this year, she said. Every tenant was issued a key that unlocks the gate to the pool.

“You still have people that will jump the fence” to get to the pool, she said. But it only has happened once so far this summer at her complex.

Apartment pools around Wichita sport many of the same security measures, property managers and leasing agents said. There are sets of rules posted for use of the pool, surveillance cameras, security guards who patrol the grounds and check the pools.

Residents at LaCrosse Apartments are issued wristbands and an access code to the gate for the pool.

“They have to have a band on their wrist that says ‘LaCrosse pool’ so we know they belong here,” said Rosemary Castillo, office assistant for the complex at Woodlawn and 37th Street North.

Anyone at the pool without the wristband has to leave, she said.

Buttonwood Tree added wristbands for pool access this summer, and Priddy said that has made a big difference.

“That’s really deterred people from coming down the street,” she said. “We had kids that walked 10 miles to be able to get into our pool” last year.

Anyone not wearing a wristband at the pool this summer has to leave, she said, and the complex’s courtesy patrol routinely checks for them.

“My residents don’t mind the pool bands,” Priddy said, though some have commented about the hassle if they want to go to the pool and can’t find their wristband.

Residents have become the best monitors of pool misuse at some complexes, managers said.

“We have a pretty good community here,” said Kristen Sampson, leasing agent at East Hampton Estates, 2901 N. Governeour. “If they see a strange character they haven’t seen before, they usually call and let somebody know.”

This story was originally published July 9, 2016 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Apartments use locked gates, wristbands to keep nonresidents out of pools."