“Accidental Drowning” is the preliminary cause of death for 18 month old Charlotte Chelminiac.

The young girl and her 55 year old grandfather were both found at the bottom of a swimming pool in Granger Thursday night. The two had gone out for a walk, and failed to return.

A family member made the discovery in the pool at a home in the 52-thousand block of Glen Arbor Court in Granger.

The grandfather has been identified as 55 year old David Prentkowski—who was an administrator at the University of Notre Dame.

“Well, he’s been here since 1991,” said Dave Harr, Associate Vice President for Auxiliary and Faculty Operations with Notre Dame. “I’ve known Dave since 1980, he and I started in the hospitality business together in St. Louis.”

Prentkowski was Notre Dame’s Director of Food Services. He spent some time at work yesterday, during the day, hours before the incident at the pool.

Thursday was to be Prentkowski’s last day of work before a scheduled vacation with his family that included a planned trip south to a reunion.

“He’ll be deeply missed here at Notre Dame, and it’s a very sad day, I know for his family, and but also here on campus,” said Harr.

As Director of Food Services, Prentkowski not only won awards, an award was named after him, to be given to others in the industry.

“He really took food services to a whole new level and really encouraged people to eat healthy and make good food options,” said Jessica Brookshire, who also works at Notre Dame.

When Prentkowski’s own health took a turn for the worse, he stepped up and co-chaired the 2012 Relay for Life on campus.

“Dave was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the fall, this past fall, and so we all experienced what he experienced which was going through treatments and hearing the news together and his declining health” said Brookshire.

Sources tell News Center 16 that health problems lately had Prentkowski working half days and that he was no longer able to drive himself to work. “You know, I think we knew he wasn’t, it was progressing, but still, we were not expecting the news that happened,” said Brookshire.

Late today, the results of a preliminary autopsy on Prentkowski were released.

The cause of death is listed as accidental drowning. A press release states that the results so far were not able to identify any additional contributing factors, and that formal results were not expected for several weeks.