Florida Sisters, 5 and 8, Found Dead in Neighbor's Pool

Two sisters who vanished from their Pensacola, Florida, home Monday evening were found unresponsive less than an hour later in a neighbor's backyard pool, People reports. The girls, ages 5 and 8, were reported missing around 6:30pm after their father, who was cooking dinner and caring for a third child at the time, realized they weren't in the house anymore, a Pensacola police spokesperson says. Officers searching the area discovered the sisters in the deep end of the fenced, locked pool about 40 minutes later; an officer climbed over the fence, pulled them out, and CPR was started, but both were pronounced dead at a local hospital. The neighbors were not home at the time.

"The fences were secure and locked," the spokesperson says. Investigators believe the 8-year-old, described as athletic and adventurous, likely scaled the fence and then let her sister in. Neighbors told police the older girl liked to explore and had briefly gone missing in the past, and that she was also known to enjoy climbing things, the Pensacola News Journal reports. The pool, the rep adds, is "very steep," and police believe "it may have caught one or the other off guard. We believe the other went to save whichever one got in trouble first." Both were found in the deep end. Police say there is no indication the parents were negligent and no charges are expected, Fox 10 reports.