The family of a 4-year-old Kentucky girl who drowned in a South Carolina pool has filed a lawsuit against a resort. Two other children have died at the resort in the past three years.
Demi Williams drowned on April 1, 2021, in one of the pools at Crown Reef Beach Resort and Waterpark in Myrtle Beach. Officials said her cause of death was suffocation due to drowning. Reported by WPDE.
The resort had no lifeguards and poor lighting, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family. The family hopes this lawsuit will lead to further safety measures to prevent further tragedies. NBC News reported.
“We have to do something,” Demi’s mother Destiny Morgan told the outlet in her first interview since losing her child. She said: “We have to do something in honor of the child so that something like this never happens again.”
Morgan said that after Demi was pulled from the pool, a nurse detected a weak pulse and other guests rushed to find a defibrillator to revive the girl.
But because the life-saving equipment poses a risk of electrocution when used on drowning victims, it is not required by state law to be in swimming areas and was unavailable to rescue workers.
According to NBC News, state law does not require all resort pools to have lifeguards.
Demi is at least the third child to drown at Crown Reef Beach Resort & Water Park between 2018 and 2021, the newspaper said, including a 5-year-old boy who died days after Demi. .
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and claims that the resort’s failure to keep lifeguards on site or to send sufficient numbers of employees to protect guests resulted in an “unsafe” resort. It accuses the company of creating a situation that was “unsafe, dangerous, or defective.”
The group said the death was caused by Crown Leaf’s “negligent, reckless and willful” actions.
Morgan, who has four other children, said Demi had a great time at the resort’s lazy river attraction, where you can go tubing in a gentle stream, and called Demi “the best.” A cute girl.”
She said her daughter asked if she could raft alone in 3-foot-deep water.
Morgan said he put Demi on her tube behind her sister and then sat in a nearby hot tub. However, when her sister got out of the car, she couldn’t find Demi, according to NBC News.
The frantic mother searched the grounds for Demi, only to find another guest dragging her, gasping for air, from the resort’s pool. Morgan and the other children don’t know how Demi got there from the lazy river, but she said her daughter may have slipped and fallen.
Several guests began chest compressions, including a nurse who detected a faint pulse and yelled for an automatic external defibrillator (AED) to deliver an electric shock to the heart.
But no one could find an AED, lifeguards or even resort staff, the suit alleges.
“There was nothing to indicate they had any disregard for human life,” Morgan told NBC News.
Demi was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
State law does not require resorts to have lifeguards at pools or lazy rivers, the newspaper reported, citing the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Only waterslides are required to have lifeguards, and other bodies of water are required to have signs indicating that there are no lifeguards on duty, NBC News reported.
The most recent inspection, conducted in July 2023, found that all pools at the resort had adequate signage indicating there were no lifeguards, the newspaper said.
Appropriate signs were also reportedly present during inspections in 2021 and 2018 when Maladziyah Fayal, 7, drowned in one of the pools.
Morgan and his attorneys, Justin Labrie and Amy Lawrence, hope the lawsuit will improve safety at the resort.
“More lifeguards, better lighting, more people, these are simple solutions to fix this problem,” Lovely told NBC News. “If you don’t want someone there during their shift, close the pool at night.”
Malazuya’s mother, Latoya Fayal, sued the resort in 2020, alleging that the death was caused by an overcrowded pool with no lifeguards or surveillance cameras, and ultimately settled the case.
According to NBC News, Crown Reef did not accept responsibility for Ms. Malazuya’s death, instead blaming Mr. Fayoglu, but acknowledged that there were no lifeguards, saying, “The pool area is not staffed by lifeguards.” There were many signs indicating this.”
Morgan was initially arrested on charges of unlawful child neglect, even though she had not been drinking and had not left the children alone, her lawyers said.
The charges were dropped last month.
Fayoglu was also initially charged, but those charges were later dropped, according to NBC News.
Crown Leaf’s attorney and general manager did not respond to multiple requests for comment from NBC News.
In another recent incident, 8-year-old Aliyah Jayko was found dead more than half a day after being sucked into a pipe in the Lazy River Breeze pool at Houston’s DoubleTree Hotel.
She drowned and suffered “mechanical asphyxia,” according to the Harris County Coroner’s Office.
The report said the pool was found to have multiple violations after being remodeled and was not in compliance with federal laws to prevent drowning.
Aliyah’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the hotel and its parent company, alleging gross negligence and seeking more than $1 million in damages.
A Hilton spokesperson said in a statement: “Hilton offers our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the young girl on the tragic death of a young girl at the DoubleTree by Hilton Houston Brookhollow.”
“This property is independently owned and operated by a third party. Hilton does not own, manage, or control the day-to-day operations of the property and does not employ the property’s staff or third-party operators. “No,” the official said.
