Inset: Reynard Tyrone Hough (Osceola County Jail). Background: The Kissimmee, Florida, neighborhood where his daughter allegedly drowned (Google Maps).
A Washington, D.C., man is in a Florida jail after his toddler daughter drowned in his arms in a hot tub while they were on vacation and staying at an Airbnb, cops say.
Deputies with the Osceola County Sheriff's Office responded just after 3:30 a.m. Saturday to a home off Nice Court in Kissimmee for a report of an unresponsive child who apparently drowned. Paramedics rushed the 20-month-old girl to a hospital, where she died about an hour later.
According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, detectives interviewed the 33-year-old father, Reynard Tyrone Hough, who admitted he had been drinking and ingested "two different types of unknown narcotics" during the night. Sometime between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., Hough told detectives in a post-Miranda interview, he entered the master bedroom where he saw the girl's mother and an infant asleep.
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
Hough said he noticed the toddler was awake and wanted to be with him, so he grabbed her and went outside to the backyard hot tub. He allegedly said he was holding his daughter in his arms when he fell asleep for roughly 20 minutes. He woke up when he felt the girl's "head drop." The suspect said he "immediately knew something was wrong because she felt limp," cops wrote.
He ran inside to alert the girl's mother, but did not mention they were in the hot tub and she may have drowned, according to the affidavit. The mother called cops and paramedics who responded to the home to find the girl "foaming at the mouth" and unresponsive, the complaint stated.
"Hough was unable to provide any reasonable explanation as to why he took his 1-year-old child, who could not swim, into a hot tub outside the residence with a depth of approximately 37 inches, at approximately 0300 hours, when the weather was approximately 55 degrees Fahrenheit, while he was feeling like he was coming off the effects of alcohol," cops wrote.
Hough had been vacationing at the Airbnb home with his family.
He's facing charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child and child neglect with great bodily harm.
The suspect is at the Osceola County Jail without bond.
