As of: March 30, 2024, 6:02 p.m
By: Teresa Toth
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The girl is said to have been violently sucked in by the pool's current system. (Symbolic image) © heiko119/imago
An 8-year-old girl dies during a family vacation in Texas. A mistake in the hotel pool is said to have been to blame. The family wants to sue the hotel.
Houston - A short vacation in Texas ends in a nightmare for a family: The 8-year-old daughter wanted to swim in the hotel pool and never returned. After being missing for several hours, she was finally found dead "in a large pipe in the pool area," Houston police said in an official statement.
Girl dies in hotel pool: Police say they will “further investigate the incident.”
The girl was reported missing around 5:45 p.m. on Saturday (March 23) after "swimming with other family members in a lazy river-style swimming pool" at the DoubleTree by Hilton Houston Brookhollow Hotel, police report. She was only found around 11:30 p.m. and declared dead by paramedics. The police want to “further investigate the incident”.
The family now wants to take legal action against the hotel. According to a statement from her lawyer - posted on Facebook - there was "a problem with the water flow" in the pool that resulted in the girl being "forcibly sucked into the pool's flow system." The lawyer called Saturday's incident "horrific." He added: “Her poor little body was twisted”.
According to the family's lawyer, the incident in the hotel could have been prevented
According to the lawsuit, the 8-year-old "loved swimming" and her mother had rented a room at the hotel that day "for a day of swimming with her family." The family was “devastated” after the tragedy, emphasized the lawyer. And further: “We demand justice because this could have been avoided.” The inspection report on the pool found that a cover was partially missing from the intake pipe.
In order to retrieve the 8-year-old's body, the emergency services had to "break open" the concrete pipe. In an interview with the
Washington Post
, a family spokesman said: "It took firefighters 13 hours to remove her body from the pipe." A lot of time was wasted. The trip also ended tragically for a family vacationing in Madeira: the parents never returned from a walk.
The family of the deceased accuses the hotel of wrongful death
In a statement sent to The
Washington Post
, a Hilton spokesperson said the company was "deeply saddened by the tragic loss of a young girl at the DoubleTree by Hilton Houston Brookhollow." At the same time, the hotel denied responsibility, stating that the hotel is “independently owned and operated by a third party.”
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The family plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the hotel and its parent company, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, as well as the hotel's local operator, Unique Crowne Hospitality. She accuses the operator of “gross negligence”. With an interim injunction, the family hopes that the pool area will be secured and no one will be endangered anymore. The family is also seeking at least $1 million in damages, according to the lawsuit.
A less tragic, albeit very disturbing, incident occurred in a hotel in Sardinia last year: a woman was lying on the buffet table, only scantily dressed.
(tt)