Mother arrested after 6-year-old drowns in Louisiana Lake

The Sabine Parish Sheriff’s Office is investigating the drowning that happened just before 6 p.m. on May 19. The 911 caller told dispatch that a child was pulled from the lake, and deputies were sent to a home on Dogwood Drive off of LA Highway 6, west of Many, identified by investigators as the Lanan Bay Cove of Toledo Bend Lake.

Through their investigation, police learned that the 6-year-old child had special needs, and it appeared that the child had been left unattended and walked a “very short distance from the house to the lake.” The mother pulled the child from the lake and administered CPR according to SPSO.

The child was brought to Sabine Medical Center, where she died.

Later in the evening, investigators arrested the mother, Bethany N. Stocking, 27, and booked her into the Sabine Parish Women’s Jail on a single felony count of cruelty to Juveniles. She was on probation after a 2023 guilty plea for cruelty to juveniles and DWI with child endangerment.

The Sabine Parish Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate this incident.