An eight-year-old girl drowned at a Houston hotel chain after being sucked into a pipe in a swimming 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, the founder of Texas EquuSearch, said he and his team were called to the hotel and were puzzled by the circumstances surrounding the girl’s disappearance.
‘Did she run away? Did someone take her or what? Anyway, we mobilized a lot of people. There were people searching outside and in different rooms and everything,” 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 find nothing.
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, the founder of Texas EquuSearch, said rescuers found the little girl’s body “wedged” deep in the pipe after sending a camera twenty feet inside.
Officers combed the hotel as Miller’s search and rescue organization reviewed security footage with Houston police.
They discovered that the little girl had gone underwater and never resurfaced.
The pool was emptied and a small remote camera from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was attached to a pole and sent nearly twenty feet into the pipes.
Equipped with a camera and a scent-tracking bloodhound, rescuers made the gruesome discovery around 11:30 p.m.
The girl’s “small hand and part of her body” appeared first, after being “wedged” deep within the pipe, Miller said.
He explained that the pipe was defective and that water was being sucked in instead of being pumped out.
First responders from the Houston Fire Department retrieved the girl’s body. The effort lasted about 13 hours.
“Many of us had to wipe tears from our eyes,” Miller said.
“I never thought in a million years it would end as badly as it did… there’s a grieving family out there, and it’s going to be a long, painful healing process.”
Houston’s homicide unit will lead the investigation into the eight-year-old’s death, which is being investigated as a drowning.
Officials have not yet released the girl’s identity pending an autopsy.
Houston firefighters recovered the eight-year-old’s body after a 13-hour effort
According to Miller, the pipe was defective and was sucking water in instead of pushing it out
It is not the first time such an accident has happened.
In June 2007, six-year-old Abigail Taylor was playing in a public wading pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club when she found herself sitting on a poorly maintained drain.
The suction tore the little girl’s small intestines from her body.
Despite nine months of medical care, including sixteen surgeries and multiple organ transplants, Abigail died in March of the following year with her family by her side.
Most recently, in 2021, 10-year-old Danika Ross was sucked into an irrigation pipe in a man-made pond at a winery in Washington state.
According to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by her family, Danika was swimming with her siblings when she was pulled into the pipe, described as “ungrated” and “larger than necessary.”
Her body was “pushed downward in a 90 degree bend” and “transported almost 70 feet up the hill via the mechanical pump mechanism.”
The Grant County Coroner determined that Danika died of asphyxia 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 will begin this year.