The Associate Coroner is calling for portable pools to be banned from sale.
It took less than 10 minutes for a portable pool to turn from a fun summer activity to a family’s worst nightmare.
Ten-month-old Majura Rapi-Davis had just celebrated his first Christmas when he was found unresponsive in a portable pool on the deck of the family home.
Associate Coroner James Buckle is now calling for portable pools between the height of 400mm and 1.2m to be banned from sale in New Zealand.
It comes as two children under the age of 5 have already drowned in portable pools this year.
“The cost of these pools has become the lives of children.”
But Minister for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Scott Simpson has been quick to rule out any ban.
“As with all product safety regulation, there is a need to balance safety with allowing people to use products of their choice,” Simpson said.
“I will consider the coroner’s report, however, at this stage I am not looking to ban them from being sold.”
On Boxing Day, 2022, Majura’s mother had gone to work while his father, also named Majura Rapi, stayed home to look after him.
About 1pm they were joined by Rapi’s two other children as well as his sister’s six children.
While Majura napped at 5pm, Rapi supervised the other tamariki as they played around the house and in a small inflatable pool on the deck at the back.
At 7pm all of the children, including Majura, were playing in the swimming pool under Rapi’s supervision.
Majura was able to walk and climb on things by pulling himself up and using furniture to keep himself stable. He was able to pull himself up to stand by the pool and could get in without help.
But because the pool collapsed inwards when weight was put on it, Majura was not able to climb out without help.
His family were aware of this, and Majura was supervised when playing in or around the pool.
When all the children were finished playing in the water, everyone congregated inside and Rapi told one of them to close the sliding door to the deck.
Rapi understood the door was closed but did not know if it had been locked.
About 9pm, Rapi’s sister arrived to collect children and he went outside to the kerb where she was parked.
All of the tamariki, other than Majura, followed Rapi outside.
Rapi estimated he was outside talking for about 10 minutes, while his sister estimated she was there for no more than two minutes.
When Rapi returned to the house and saw that Majura was no longer in the living room, he checked the bedrooms and kitchen. He then went to the deck and found the ranch slider was slightly open.
He found his son lying face down, in the part of the pool nearest to the house.
Rapi pulled him out and ran to seek help from neighbours, carrying Majura in his arms.
A neighbour who was an emergency medical technician started treating Majura. Another neighbour who was a nurse arrived and also treated him until an ambulance arrived.
Attempts to resuscitate him were not successful. An autopsy concluded his death was consistent with drowning.
The pool was inflatable and had a maximum height of 490mm and had been inflated to the height of 460mm.
It had water in it to a depth of about 320mm and because the pool had a capacity of less than 35,000 litres, a building consent was not required to have it on the property.
However, because the pool had a maximum depth of 400mm or more, Rapi and Davis were legally required to have physical barriers at least 1200mm high around the pool to prevent access to it by unsupervised young children.
The swimming pool was on a deck, which was enclosed with fencing on three sides and the house on the fourth. The fencing on two sides was approximately 510mm tall. The fence on the third was approximately 1040mm tall. They were all under the minimum mandated height of 1200mm.
On the fourth side of the deck was the house. The wall of a building can be a physical barrier for access to a pool.
However, as there was a door in the wall it needed to have a latching device that automatically closes the door or an alarm that sounds when the door is opened.
The sliding door to the deck did not meet minimum legal requirements.
Associate Coroner Buckle said it was unlikely Majura had the strength to be able to open the ranch slider himself and it seemed either the child that closed it did not shut it properly or that another child opened the ranch slider and then did not close it properly.
“The open ranch slider allowed Baby Majura to get access to the deck and the swimming pool.
“I am satisfied that he must have pulled himself up using the side of the pool, causing it to collapse and for him to fall in. I cannot know whether he was deliberately trying to get into the pool or whether he fell in by accident.”
Drowning has historically been a leading cause of injury-related death for children under 4 and the Associate Coroner said there was evidence to suggest that drowning in residential pools was on the rise.
In the 10 years from 2014-2023, 12 children aged 5 years or under drowned in pools that were large enough to require fencing, and a further five had died in temporary pools.
In March 2025, Coroner Michael Robb released findings relating to the drowning deaths of eight children aged 5 years old or younger in the summer of December 2021 and January 2022. Two of those decisions related to deaths of children in above ground swimming pools.
Coroner Robb made a series of recommendations in order to prevent avoidable deaths of young children, including that temporary pools of less than 1.2 metres in height be discontinued from sale.
Associate Coroner Buckle said: “I endorse Coroner Robb’s recommendation and, with a slight modification, repeat it.
“I recommend that portable pools between the heights of 400mm and 1.2m be discontinued from sale in order to prevent avoidable deaths of young children.”
Associate Coroner Buckle had reviewed online advertisements for swimming pools and looked at the packaging in two large chain stores and found consistencies in the advertising, often showing the pool in a backyard with people in the pool with no barriers around it.
“A picture is worth a thousand words.
“I suggest that if the promotional and packaging material for the pools unequivocally showed compliance with the minimum legal requirements, then that may nudge purchasers to check the minimum barrier requirements and to take the requirements more seriously,” he said.
“Certainly, it must be better than promotional images that send the tacit message that the mandated barriers are unnecessary.”
He also recommended that Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE), or another Government department, conduct or commission research into the number of portable pools sold, how often pools are misused and the impact of that on drowning statistics.
“When I have pointed to the legal deficiencies surrounding access to the pool and the dangers of young children having access to portable pools, it is to highlight a problem that is occurring in Aotearoa New Zealand with the hope of decreasing the chances of it being repeated, not to criticise Baby Majura’s whānau.”
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David Hall of MBIE said it had carefully considered Associate Coroner Buckle’s recommendations.
“We are committed to addressing pool safety risks through existing regulatory settings, guidance, education and an ongoing policy review.
“For example, the Associate Coroner’s recommendation regarding promotional and advertising imagery will be factored into our work on guidance.”
However, some of the recommendations would require further evidence or legislative change to progress and MBIE was considering how to further incorporate these recommendations in our ongoing work on pool safety, he said.
Gavin Walker, of Water Safety NZ, said mandatory pool fencing legislation transformed child water safety back in the 1980s.
Before regulations were introduced, an average of nine New Zealanders aged under 5 drowned in home pools every year. Less than a decade later, annual drownings of young children in home pools had dropped to five every year.
Now, the ten-year average is lower than two preschoolers drowning in a home pool every year.
“Over the past decade, cheap portable pools have become easily available and are ending up being used without safety fencing in properties across New Zealand” he said.
“Any unfenced pool is a tragedy waiting to happen. A split-second distraction can have devastating implications for our youngest and most vulnerable.
“Two deaths in the past two months paints an urgent picture. We simply need to move faster.”
Brianna McIlraith is a Queenstown-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the lower South Island. She has been a journalist since 2018 and has had a strong interest in business and financial journalism.