From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
Tommy Lee couldn't have asked for better weather on June 16, the day he invited 15 preschoolers and their parents to a birthday party at his Malibu home. Brandon, the older of the former Mötley Crüe drummer's two sons by ex-wife Pamela Anderson, had just turned 5. A magician did tricks, chicken roasted on the grill, and kids played in the kidney-shaped pool. "It was," says a guest, "what you'd expect at a family barbecue."

And then, tragically, it wasn't. Around 4:45 p.m., 4-year-old Daniel Veres was discovered facedown in the pool's shallow end. After two adults dragged him from the water, Lee, 38, immediately phoned 911. "There's a big pool party here, and no one was paying attention for a minute!" he shouted. He then frantically relayed the dispatcher's CPR instructions to other parents trying to revive the boy, who was vomiting but not breathing.

Paramedics arrived soon after, but too late for Daniel, son of TV producer James Veres, 52, and his wife, actress Ursula Karven. Though the boy's drowning was ruled accidental, his father angrily faulted Lee for inadequately supervising the pool. "It's inexcusable and just amazing to me," Veres (who, with his wife, had not been at the birthday party) told an L.A. TV station.

Two nights after Daniel's drowning, stunned parents from the party attended a grief-counseling session. Lee would have joined them, says one, but with media camped outside, "he was a prisoner in his home. He was alone." Says a spokesman: "Tommy is devastated."