MINOOKA - A boy and his dog drowned while out for a walk Saturday morning near their Minooka home.
Ryan Rames, a fifth grader at Minooka Intermediate School, was pronounced dead at 3:40 p.m. Saturday in the emergency room of Morris Hospital, where efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
Members of the Minooka Dive Team had, according to Grundy County Coroner John Callahan, pulled Ryan and his dog from the water of a retention pond in Minooka's Lakewood Trails subdivision at 1:42 p.m.
The Minooka Police Department, in a press release issued Saturday, noted that they responded at 12:45 p.m. Saturday to the report of a missing juvenile. They were informed by family members that Ryan had taken the family dog for a walk around 10:30 a.m. and not returned.
Callahan noted in a Saturday press release that Ryan's father had gone looking for the 11-year-old and had discovered footprints, accompanied by tracks of a small dog, going onto the ice of the retention pond. It was upon making this discovery that he contacted police.
The pond, Callahan said, had an aerator running in the middle. As a result, there was an area of the water that was not frozen.
It appears, he said, the boy and the dog traveled onto the ice, which gave way as they neared the center.
There were no witnesses to the incident, which remains under investigation by Minooka officials and the coroner's office.
Ryan's mom, according to a report published at www.nbcchicago.com, the Web site for Channel 5, the NBC affiliate out of Chicago, thinks the dog took off running from Ryan and fell into an unfrozen part of the retention pond, prompting Ryan to go in after his beloved pet.
"I think that's what got him in the end, because he went in after her, instead of just letting her go," she told www.nbcchicago.com.
The fifth-grader ran cross country, was on a wreslting team and loved playing Nintendo Wii.
"He had a good heart," Ryan's mom told Channel 5. "He just loved everybody. He was so fun to be around; just always lit up the room. He always joked around, just had no cares in the world."