An 8-year-old Lake Wildwood girl drowned Saturday after apparently slipping on rocks jutting out into the lake, the Nevada County Sheriff's Office reported.

Cheyenne Reusser was pronounced dead after she was flown to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital in Grass Valley, Sgt. Bill Jones said on Sunday afternoon.

An autopsy is planned, and the case remains under investigation, Sgt. Rich Kimball said.

Around 1 p.m., Reusser was swimming with two other children in Lake Wildwood as her mother watched from the beach, Jones said.

Reusser then said she wanted to play in a fenced playground nearby and left. At some point, she evidently removed the water wing flotation devices she had been wearing because she could not swim, Jones said.

About five to 10 minutes later, another child had asked to leave for the playground and Reusser's mother was accompanying him when she discovered her daughter was missing, Jones said.

"She started looking around for her and heard people yelling," Jones said. "She looked over to (see) a man pulling Cheyenne out of the water."

Deputies surmise Cheyenne was drawn to a row of boulders extending into the lake south of the beach, a spot long favored by area children..

The partially submerged boulders are covered in moss and splashed by the wake of boats, Jones said.

"(We) think she walked onto the rock, slipped, fell, hit her head on the rocks, then slid (into the water)," Jones said.

Around 1:18 p.m., several people on the beach and in boats saw her floating near the rocky point, Jones said.

One woman from a boat dived in and a man on the beach rushed to pull her out of the water.

Two lifeguards, Michael "Tim" Stoffal and Brad Miller, who had been monitoring the community's pool nearby, heard yelling and raced to the shore, where they began administering CPR to Cheyenne.

"Everybody was just jumping, doing everything they could to save her," Kimball said.

Stoffal said the girl's lungs were filled with fluid and they were not able to detect a pulse.

"The lifeguards were professional, and they did everything they could," said Kati Aldrich, Lake Wildwood's recreation director.

Reusser was in Sheila Waggoner's second-grade class at Williams Ranch School.

"She was a sweet girl with a lot of imagination," Waggoner said Sunday, adding that she was heartbroken for the family.

Although she was new to the school this year, Reusser had made many friends, but was particularly close to her third-grade brother, Waggoner said.

"She was happy go-lucky, a typical second-grader," said Melinda Rodriguez, a former aide at the school, noting that Reusser liked to jump rope.

Reusser's family could not be reached Sunday.

This is the first drowning in Lake Wildwood in nearly a decade, local residents said.

"We're proud about how safe it is here," said Stoffal, a student at California State University, Long Beach. He has been a seasonal lifeguard for five years at Lake Wildwood's pool.

Stoffal said Saturday's attempted rescue was the first he's made at Lake Wildwood, a private, gated community with a man-made lake of the same name.

Waggoner said grief counselors will visit her class this morning, but then they will continue with lessons.

"(We're) going to try to do some of our normal routine," Waggoner said. "I think the kids will actually feel more secure."


<I>To contact staff writer David Mirhadi, e-mail davidm@theunion.com or call 477-4229.
To contact staff writer Becky Trout, e-mail beckyt@theunion.com or call 477-4234.</I>