INDIO — A jury Monday awarded $400,000 in damages to a man whose 5- year-old disabled daughter drowned at a children’s center while taking part in an after- school program.



Anyah Raven Glossinger was found submerged in a mineral pool, where she was taking part in hydrotherapy, at the Angel View Crippled Children’s Center in Desert Hot Springs on Jan. 23, 2008. The youngster, who was autistic and legally blind, died the next day.



Her father, Michael Glossinger of Mill Valley, filed a wrongful death suit in July 2008 against Angel View Crippled Children’s Foundation, the Palm Springs Unified School District, three people who had worked with his daughter and United Cerebral Palsy of the Inland Empire, which operated the program.



The jury voted 9-3 to award Glossinger $40,000 in damages for past loss of companionship and $360,000 for future loss of companionship.



Anyah, who was diagnosed with low-functioning autism, was in a special education kindergarten class at Cielo Vista Elementary in Palm Springs at the time of her death, which Desert Hot Springs police investigators deemed accidental. She lived with her mother in Cathedral City.



Her father’s lawsuit claimed that three people affiliated with the United Cerebral Palsy of the Inland Empire’s Little Bridge program knew Anyah was autistic and blind, yet did not give her a life-vest before she went into the pool.



“While unsupervised and without a lifesaving vest, Anyah Glossinger drowned,” the suit claimed.



The Little Bridge program was shut down by the state Department of Social Services in March 2008.



Glossinger and Anyah’s mother, Emily Wereschagin, testified Thursday about their parental arrangements for their daughter.



Glossinger, who did not have custody, said he sought to abandon his parental rights at one point so he and Wereschagin could work out their differences out of court.



Shortly before Anyah died, “that’s when we made arrangements together for me to come down (from Northern California),” Glossinger said.



It was not clear if the parents were divorced or had ever been married.