NEED TO KNOW
- A mom has spoken out after her 3-year-old son drowned in a retention pond in Florida
- Kai Goodlander became submerged in the body of water at an apartment complex in 2024
- Autumn Goodlander has since received a $15.5 million settlement tied to her son’s death
A mother has spoken out after her young son drowned in a retention pond in Florida.
Kai Goodlander became submerged in the body of water at an apartment complex in January 2024, CBS Orlando reported. He was 3 years old at the time of his death.
Almost two years later, in December 2025, the boy’s mother, Autumn Goodlander, spoke to the local outlet, remembering her “perfect” son and how the tragedy unfolded.
When Autumn’s boyfriend at the time was in a different room in her home folding laundry, CBS Orlando reported that Kai snuck out the front door of the house. “What really did him in, though, is that he closed the door behind him,” Autumn told the outlet.
The mom was working at the time of the incident, and she learned of her son’s death at the hospital. “The doctor came in and was like, ‘There’s nothing we can do for him,’ ” she recalled to CBS Orlando. “And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Your son’s gone.’ ”
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According to Autumn, she later discovered that Kai drowned in the water near where the mother-son pair resided.
“I knew that the only body of water he had access to in that community was that retention pond,” she said to CBS Orlando.
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Autumn eventually sought legal action and worked with The Haggard Law Firm, which claimed in a news release that the retention pond where Kai drowned “was not meant to hold water at all.”
Instead, the firm said it “was actually a dry detention pond” — a manmade depression that temporarily stores stormwater runoff and eventually drains it.
The housing complex, Huntington Reserve Apartments, and its management company, TPI Management Services, settled with Autumn for $15.5 million in October 2025, Haggard Law Firm said in its news release.
It claimed in a statement, “There was no reason this tragedy should have occurred. Proper maintenance and adherence to safety standards could have saved Kai’s life.” (It is not clear whether Huntington and TPI acknowledged or denied liability in the settlement.)
Autumn told CBS Orlando she is still speaking out after the tragedy in hopes of enacting change and potentially saving another child from the same fate as her 3-year-old son. “I would like to see people put up perimeters around these retention ponds,” she said.
According to the local outlet, which cited attorneys, Huntington Reserve Apartments has since installed a fence around the retention pond as part of the settlement.
Both Huntington Reserve Apartments and TPI Management Services did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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