A man has been charged with manslaughter after a baby drowned at a popular campsite.
The 42-year-old was arrested days after the seven-month-old boy was discovered by his mother in the rest area’s lake, near Gympie north of Brisbane.
The man was known to the child, police said.
The boy’s family were passing through on their way back to far north Queensland and camped at Chatsworth Park about 50m from the water’s edge on Friday night, police said.
The mother called emergency services to the campsite after she found her child unresponsive in the lake on Saturday morning.
People performed CPR on the baby before he was rushed to hospital, but the child was declared dead later that night.
A 42-year-old man has been charged with manslaughter after a baby was found drowned in a lake near Brisbane
The boy’s family had been travelling through the area when the incident happened at a popular campsite on Friday
Police on Monday said the mother had not been able to explain how the child had ended up in the water.
‘The mother of the child did retrieve this child from the water. It’s been a very traumatic experience for her clearly,’ Detective Inspector Craig Mansfield told reporters.
Homicide detectives were called in and the 42-year-old man was on Tuesday arrested at Bundamba, more than 200km south of the campsite.
The man has been charged with domestic violence-related manslaughter and is due to appear in Ipswich Magistrates Court on Wednesday.
