Pool safety the focus in death of mom influencer’s 3-year-old son
If you’re not an avid follower of mom influencers, you might not know about the tragedy surrounding 26-year-old Emilie Kiser, a perky, honey-blonde housewife from Chandler, Arizona, who has more than 6 million combined followers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
Kiser is going through what she calls “a parent’s worst nightmare,” while facing lacerating questions online about the large, sparkling backyard pool that was often on display in her cheerful social media posts about her idyllic home life.
On May 18, her 3-year-old son Trigg died in the hospital, six days after police responded to a call that he was found unconscious in the pool, according to the Arizona Republic, NBC affiliate KPNX and other outlets.
Police in Chandler, outside Phoenix, closed their investigation into Trigg’s death, calling it “unimaginable,” according to Us Weekly and People. Trigg was a sweet-faced little boy who often appeared in his mother’s social media videos, sometimes snuggling with her in bed before she’d get them up and ready to start their day.
Police have not released any information about the circumstances of the drowning, including who was home with Trigg, how he got into the pool and whether or not the pool was covered at the time.
Kiser’s social media posts show that the pool didn’t have a fence around it, and it was just a few steps away from a rear glass door opening out from the family room. Some posts over the past year showed there was either a cover or net over the pool, including while Trigg was riding his bicycle around it. But other recent posts appear to show no cover or net over the pool when the family was not using it.
Kiser has called the drowning “accidental” in a lawsuit she’s filed to keep some records of Trigg’s death out of public view, including 911 calls and security camera footage that might have captured the drowning, the Arizona Republic reported.
People magazine cited a source who said that Kiser wasn’t home when Trigg drowned, raising questions among followers about whether her husband, Brady Kiser, was home, looking after Trigg and his baby brother, who was born in March.
“Emilie is trying her best to be there for her surviving son, 2-month-old Theodore. Every day is a battle,” the lawsuit suit. For some reason, Kiser used her maiden name in the lawsuit. The document also doesn’t mention her 28-year-old husband of six years, as it addresses the media frenzy surrounding the tragedy.
“Emilie and her family desperately want to grieve in private, but sadly, the public will not let them,” the lawsuit said. “Appallingly, 100+ public record requests have been filed with both the City of Chandler and the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office.”
The frenzy includes all the TikTok videos and Reddit threads that have been created in the wake of the tragedy, debating whether Kiser and her husband did all they could to make their backyard safe or adhered to Arizona state law regarding pool safety. Some have accused Kiser of not installing a fence because it wasn’t “aesthetic.”
A TikToker who runs a mom influencer account called GoCoastalCrew, defended Kiser by sharing screenshots from videos that Kiser had posted on different dates over the past year. The videos show that the Kisers had at one point installed a safety net over their pool, while at another point had placed a cover that appeared to fig snugly across its entire surface. There’s also a video of Kiser seeking input from followers on the best covers to buy.
“I’ve seen hundreds of videos of people, calling her neglectful, saying she should have known better because she had a pool and she had very young kids,” the TikToker said. “Regardless of exactly what happened, you can clearly see from her videos that she was (expletive) trying.”
The TikToker mentioned a fact pushed by pool safety advocates — that young children can quickly slip out of the view of caregivers and end up in a pool or other body of water in minutes, before they are found. “What happened was a freak accident. It happened in a literal split (expletive) second,” the TikToker said.
But Laurie Roberts, a columnist for the Arizona Republic, had a different take, writing that Trigg’s death was not “unimaginable” but “preventable.” She cited national statistics that show that drowning is the leading cause of death for children in the United States who are 1 to 4 years old. The American Red Cross has also said that 87% of fatalities involving children younger than 5 occur in pools or hot tubs, most of which are owned by family, friends or relatives.
“If you don’t have a fence around your pool or a net covering your pool, get one,” Roberts wrote. “It’s an investment you cannot afford not to make.”
While Roberts gave equal weight to the safety benefits of fences and pool covers, both the American Red Cross and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission put the emphasis on installing “isolation” fences around pools that are least 4 feet high and come with self-closing and self-latching gates that are out of the reach of a child. These fences, which separate the pool area from the house and are, reduce a child’s risk of drowning 83%, compared to a fence that just surrounds the property, the American Red Cross said.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross spoke of pool covers as a “secondary barrier,” while the U.S. Product Safety Commission referred to them as adding “another layer of protection.” Yet another layer of protection, according to both agencies, involves installing door alarms and locks, out of reach of children, on all doors leading to the pool area.
On Reddit, a Kiser defender called Roberts’ Arizona Republic column “disgusting” for seeming to suggest that Emilie and Brady Kiser could have been more vigilant, but someone else said: “Two things can be true at once. They are absolutely deserving of compassion and sympathy during this horrific nightmare AND they should have had a pool fence.”
According to Kiser’s Instagram, she, her husband and Trigg moved into their Mediterranean villa-style home about a year ago. A four-bedroom home on their street recently sold for $2 million. Kiser’s home featured a high-ceilinged great room and a well-appointed kitchen with white marble countertops and island. Kiser often filmed videos of herself lovingly cleaning those countertops, or folding clothes in her large laundry room, as if to give her followers inspiration to also get their homes in order.
Followers suggested that Kiser’s earnings as a mom influencer helped pay for the house. Kiser sometimes posted several videos a day on TikTok, showing her going about her day, cleaning, running errands, decorating for Christmas, or putting on makeup, all while endorsing products, from swim suits to Walmart delivery services to backyard furnishings from Home Goods.
For Kiser, her backyard, with the pool, was her “heaven,” with its sweeping lawn, lemon trees and luxe swing set for Trigg. When Kiser and her husband got the keys to the house in May 2024, she said on YouTube that she was “so excited” to finally give their two dogs and Trigg “a big back yard and a pool.”
“Hopefully, we’ll be here for decades to come,” Kiser said. She then turned to Trigg and asked, “Triggy, are you excited? He’s like, ‘I want to swim!’”
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