Now, River Albert-Wihone’s family is hoping his story can save lives.<\/p>\n
The coroner’s inquest into the toddlers death is underway in Auckland District Court, and has heard emotional statements from his family.<\/p>\n
River was just over a year old when he was found in the pool at his family home and was taken to Starship Children’s Hospital, where he later died.<\/p>\n
His parents addressed the coroner through tears on Monday morning at the beginning of the inquest before Coroner Alison Mills.<\/p>\n
A number of family members watched from the back of the courtroom, clad in All Blacks jerseys \u2013 River’s favourite team.<\/p>\n
His father, Matthew, spoke about the immense pain of his loss.<\/p>\n
“Losing a child changes you in ways you can’t describe,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I always worried if my kids would be OK if I died, I never once imagined losing one of them.”<\/p>\n
He described the feeling as numb, while at the same time the worst pain imaginable.<\/p>\n
“The last almost three years have been the hardest of my life, but I stand here today, like you all, in hopes that our experience, our pain and grief, can help make changes so that no other family has to experience it also,” Albert-Wihone said.<\/p>\n
“That’s how we can honour our boy.”<\/p>\n
River’s mother, Lauren, spoke about the things that could have been that they never get to share with their son.<\/p>\n
“Him saying I love you for the first time, him meeting his little sisters, his first day of kindy, school, Christmases, his first All Blacks or Warriors game, birthdays,” she said.<\/p>\n
“He would be four this year, I would give anything in the world for the life we were supposed to have.”<\/p>\n
Concerns raised about pool fence, gate<\/p>\n
![\"River](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/river-albert-wihones-family-at-the-inquest-into-his-death-so-OHUHRTV6FRGELOJI2DNH3KICHA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
River Albert-Wihone’s family at the inquest into his death. (Source: RNZ \/ Finn Blackwell) (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Part of the inquest will look at issues with the pool fence and gate at the property.<\/p>\n
River’s grandmother, Christine Robinson, told the inquest she had raised concerns prior to her grandson’s death.<\/p>\n
“I first raised concerns to, firstly, the builder, about January, I think it was the 20th of January 2022,” she said.<\/p>\n
Robinson described it as an intermittent fault in the pool gate, some times closing on the second try, others taking a number of attempts before properly closing.<\/p>\n
Her pleas for a fix fell on deaf ears, Robinson said.<\/p>\n
“I was frustrated,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I was hoping that the council could step in and do something, I was frustrated at that stage.”<\/p>\n
Robinson said she tried to manage the issue by locking the gate and keeping people away from the pool.<\/p>\n
The inquest was set to hear from the property’s landlord as well as the property manager on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
A fencing expert told the inquest he believed River’s death was preventable.<\/p>\n
The coroner later that afternoon heard from Alexander Silver, who runs a fencing company, and had a look at the gate and fence at the rental property.<\/p>\n
Silver said the drowning could have been avoided had the gates been installed using better quality hinges and latches.<\/p>\n
“There were a lot of basic mistakes,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The way they attached the post into the concrete rather than into the actual brick, that wasn’t done by a professional.”<\/p>\n
‘He’s left a big hole’<\/p>\n
Speaking to RNZ, Robinson remembered her grandson’s “beautiful” hair.<\/p>\n
“He loved the All Blacks,” she said.<\/p>\n
“He was 14 months, but he’s left a big hole.”<\/p>\n
Robinson was hoping for more accountability from landlords, but had been left wondering if she could have done more.<\/p>\n
“I thought I did enough to get the gate repaired, I thought managing it, it would be fine,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I hope from this that there’s going to be awareness and then River’s going to save many lives.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A “beautiful boy” wandered into a pool in 2023, he died in his mother’s arms 12 days later.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1081,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-579033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accident","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}