An eight-year-old girl drowned at a Houston chain hotel after being sucked into a pipe in the pool.
The unnamed girl disappeared Saturday while swimming with her family at the DoubleTree by Hilton Houston Brookhollow on the city’s northwest side. When her parents couldn’t find her, she was reported missing at 9:45 p.m.
Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, said he and his team were called to the hotel and were baffled by the circumstances surrounding the girl’s disappearance.
‘Did he walk away? Did someone take her or what? Anyway, we mobilized a lot of people. We had people searching outside and in different rooms and all that,” Miller said. ABC13 Houston.
According to police spokesman John Cannon, the Houston Fire Department inspected four pipes in the pool, each about a foot wide, but could not find anything.
An eight-year-old girl died after being sucked into a pool pipe (pictured) at the DoubleTree by Hilton Houston Brookhollow.
The girl was initially reported missing, but rescue teams reviewed security footage and determined she had gone underwater and never resurfaced.
Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, said rescuers found the girl’s body “trapped” deep inside the pipe after sending a camera 20 feet inside.
Officers combed the hotel while Miller’s search and rescue nonprofit reviewed security footage along with the Houston Police Department.
They discovered that the girl had gone underwater and never resurfaced.
The pool was drained and a small remote camera from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was attached to a pole and sent nearly 20 feet into the pipes.
Equipped with the camera and a scent hound, rescuers made the gruesome discovery around 11:30 p.m.
The girl’s “small hand and part of her body” were the first to appear, as they were “trapped” deep inside the pipe, Miller said.
He explained that the pipe was not working properly and was sucking water instead of pumping it.
First responders from the Houston Fire Department recovered the girl’s body. The effort lasted around 13 hours.
“A lot of us had to wipe tears from our eyes,” Miller said.
“I never, ever thought in a million years this would end as bad as it did… there’s a grieving family out there, and it’s going to be a long, painful healing process for them.”
The Houston homicide division will lead the investigation into the eight-year-old boy’s death, which is being investigated as a drowning.
Authorities have not yet released the girl’s identity pending an autopsy.
The Houston Fire Department recovered the eight-year-old boy’s body after a 13-hour effort.
According to Miller, the pipe was not working properly and was sucking water in instead of expelling it.
This is not the first time such an accident has occurred.
In June 2007, six-year-old Abigail Taylor was playing in a public wading pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club when she sat on a bad drain.
The suction force tore the girl’s small intestine from her body.
Despite nine months of medical care that included 16 surgeries and multiple organ transplants, Abigail died with her family at her side in March of the following year.
More recently, in 2021, 10-year-old Danika Ross was sucked down an irrigation pipe into an artificial pond at a Washington state winery.
According to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by her family, Danika was swimming with her brothers when she was dragged into the pipe, described as “not grated” and “larger than necessary.”
His body was “pushed down a 90-degree curve” and “transported nearly 70 feet uphill by mechanical pump mechanism.”
The Grant County Coroner determined that Danika died from asphyxiation due to drowning and torso compression due to pressure in the pipe.
The trial was postponed after an appeal was filed in December 2022 and is scheduled to begin this year.