Amaya White talks about the death of her 2-year-old daughter Melani Ava Mixson, in 2024. She appeared with her attorney, Adam Finkel, on Tuesday, May 26, 2026. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today,
Published on May 26, 2026 at 6:04 pm
Free local news and info, in your inbox at 6 a.m. M-F. Sign up for the Jacksonville Today newsletter.
With summer arriving, a tearful Amaya White wants to help parents avoid the heartache she’s endured since her 2-year-old daughter drowned a year and half ago.
White spoke Tuesday about Melani Ava Mixson’s death in September 2024 at a Southside apartment complex where she slid into a retention pond.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
White pushed for all complexes with pools or ponds to help with drowning prevention and water safety.
“I don’t want it to happen to anybody,” she said. “I want this to be the last problem, and I need a fix, something to know that I am being heard, that we are all being heard and somebody cares.”
Melani’s death was one of 106 drownings recorded by the Florida Department of Children and Families in 2024. Three of them were in Duval County, with four in Clay County, one in Nassau County and one in St. Johns County. None were reported in Baker or Putnam counties.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
The department recorded 120 drownings last year. Drowning is the No. 1 cause of child deaths.
White spoke Tuesday outside the Bennett Creek apartment complex off Salisbury Road where her daughter died.
The family and their attorney reminded people that May is National Water Safety Month, which the World Waterpark Association started in 2003 to prevent drowning and promote safe practices around pools, beaches, and open water as the summer recreation season begins.
“If you live in one of those complexes; if you work for one of those management companies, is that pond maintained in compliance with mandatory safety laws?” asked Coral Gables attorney Adam Finkel. “Do something; do something now. We don’t want to be back here talking about another loss of life.”
No one from the complex or its management company, The Richman Group, responded to Jacksonville Today‘s requests for comment.
The St. Johns Water Management says retention ponds need to be fenced or sloped no more than 1 foot down for every four feet of shoreline.
Finkel said this pond has eroded to a very steep shoreline. When it was built, it was not that steep, with bushes to “deter somebody from ending up in the water, like a child,” he said. But that was not the case when Melani Ava Mixson died Sept. 18, 2024.
The family has sued over the issue. A trial is set for Sept. 28.
Mixon said it has been hard living there without her “one and only” daughter. But it is even harder to walk past that pond and a memorial there, and see that nothing has changed, she said.
“It just would make me feel a lot better if there was a fence around it,” White said. “They pay football; around it; they kick a ball; they play soccer around it. There is so much that could happen. It is an accident that could just happen and there’s not fence there to this day. I don’t get it.”
As schools get out for the summer, parents and caregivers need to keep a close eye on their children near water, said Jessica Winberry, prevention coordinator with THE PLAYERS Center for Child Health at Wolfson Children’s Hospital. This is always a time of concern, she said.
“They may be out of their routine and have more access to water,” Winberry said. “So this is definitely a time of year where parents need to do everything they possibly can to have multiple layers of protection to any body of water that their child, no matter what the age, has access to.”
Never leave a child alone, and make sure there are gates, locks, fences or other barriers to a pool, as well as alarms on doors and windows that a young child might use to get out of a house, Winberry said.
“Drowning is a silent event,” Winberry said. “The caregiver goes into the house for a minute and they think they will hear the child fall in the pool or splashes, but that is not really what happens. That child slips under that water and makes very little noise.”
Jacksonville’s community pools offer the Learn-to-Swim Program. First sessions will start June 8. Each two-week session costs $60. For information, go to jacksonville.gov/departments/parks-and-recreation/jaxparks/aquatics, call (904) 255-6777, or email SplashSquad@coj.net. A state program offering free vouchers for swim lessons closed to applications March 20.
