A devastated mother has recalled the agony she felt when she found out her nine-year-old daughter had drowned after being swept down a storm drain.
Mia Holland-McCormack drowned on Boxing Day night last year after becoming trapped in a flooded drain when she jumped the back fence of her father’s home in Rochedale South, southeast of Brisbane.
Her mother, Kayla Holland, said the night her daughter, who suffered from severe autism, became one of ten victims killed by fierce storms on the East Coast, was “a bit of a blur.”
Mia had been with her father Ryan that night and loved the water, and her mother said she saw the overflowing drain and jumped in, thinking it was a bit funny.
“At about six o’clock at night, Ryan (Mia’s father) called me very stressed saying he had run away,” said Holland, who lives in the southeast Queensland town of Logan. The courier mail.
Kayla Holland (pictured right with Mia) has told of the agony of losing her nine-year-old daughter, Mia Holland-McCormack.
After a frantic search involving police and firefighters, Mia’s body was found “quite a distance” from the drain opening, having been swept away by the fast-moving waters.
The side of the drain near a playground had a grate, but the other side was uncovered, Holland said.
Mia’s 12-year-old brother Eli is also autistic and her mother says she couldn’t understand where her sister had gone.
“The first few weeks were very difficult for him because he just didn’t understand where she was, what was going on,” Holland said.
A GoFundMe page created by Tamara Turner to help fund Mia’s funeral described the nine-year-old girl as someone who ‘“I loved adventures and getting into mischief.”
Holland said it was a huge struggle to return to the house she lived in with Mia and her job as a teacher’s assistant, since many of the children reminded her of her little girl.
Mia escaped from her father’s home in north Brisbane on the night she drowned and her body was found in a stormwater drain.
Holland is now working to honor her daughter by asking local councils to ensure stormwater drains are fully protected.
“It is imperative to take preventive measures to avoid these types of accidents in the future,” the petition read.
“These incidents not only endanger the lives of those involved, but also place undue pressure on emergency response teams and resources.”
Holland said Mia had had her future taken away from her because she assumed it was “too difficult” to put a grate over a drain.
“I’m going to miss seeing the kind of person he was going to be and what he was going to look like and what he was going to do and all the fun moments,” Holland said.
