Lisa Niva-Wiggle woke up from her nap to a nightmare
– her husband screaming and her twin 2-year-old girls drowning
in their family pool.
Lisa Niva-Wiggle woke up from her nap to a nightmare – her husband screaming and her twin 2-year-old girls drowning in their family pool.
Aspen and Annalise Niva-Wiggle were having a tea party on the back deck of their San Martin home about 4 p.m. Saturday while their mother, Lisa, napped in her bedroom with a door open to the outside, Lisa Niva-Wiggle said. Her husband, Raymond, worked in the garage, while a horse trainer and a family friend also milled about the property. Though Santa Clara County Sheriff’s detectives are still investigating the incident, Lisa Niva-Wiggle said Monday she believed the girls bypassed a locked gate and went to the pool to get water for their tea set. She woke up to her husband screaming, she said.
“I immediately dialed 911 and then ran outside to see my husband knelt down next to Annalise performing CPR, and then I saw Aspen in the pool,” Lisa Niva-Wiggle said in between sobs on the other side of her home’s iron gate Monday. Across the street outside a neighbor’s home, three young girls giggled and screamed as they bounced on a trampoline.
A fence surrounds Niva-Wiggle’s pool, and the mother said she and her husband locked it Saturday. Yet, somehow the lock did not prevent the girls – who were “very independent” and would have turned 3 years old Dec. 18 – from opening the latch, she said. The girls might not have screamed for help because they knew the pool was off limits, she said.
“We were so safety conscious. The girls had crib tops, the gate was always locked, they always wore helmets. We told them time and time again, ‘You never go to the pool without mommy,'” she said while wiping tears from her cheeks and being hugged by friends and family members. “We did everything we could to protect our kids. We just loved them so much.”
Aspen Niva-Wiggle died that evening at Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy. Her sister died at 11 a.m. Sunday at Stanford Medical Center after a helicopter took her there. Aspen and Annalise Niva-Wiggle were the couple’s only children.
Detectives are investigating the incident as an unattended death until they can confirm it was accidental drowning, said Sgt. Jim Cardenas.
“We have two young children who died. This is a very serious event, and we’re investigating every possibility we have before coming to a conclusion,” Cardenas said.
About 250 children younger than 5 years old die each year by drowning, and an additional 1,500 are treated for water submersion injuries, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Drowning is the second leading cause of death for this age group, topped only by motor vehicle incidents.
While authorities investigated, Lisa Niva-Wiggle and about five friends and family members spent Monday on her front stoop, holding each other and staring at a miniature plastic push-car the girls used to play with.
“When things like this happen, you start to realize how many people love you, and we really appreciate it,” Lisa Niva-Wiggle said.
People and media outlets across the country have called the family to offer condolences and find out what happened, she said. As a professional horse trainer, Lisa Niva-Wiggle has traveled extensively and also has a corral in her wide backyard, which is part of the reason she and her husband bought the hilly, expansive property along the 3000 block of Paseo Vista Avenue during her pregnancy three years ago, she said. She was napping Saturday because she had worked a late shift Friday collecting tickets at the Saddle Rack, a concert venue and dance hall in Fremont.
The family will hold a reception for the girls in their stable within a couple weeks, but for now they just want time to grieve and pray.
“We appreciate any thoughts and prayers,” Lisa Niva-Wiggle said. “This should never happen to anyone.”
