Father details daughter's drowning in Mechta pool
It turned out that there were other holidaymakers in the pool as well
New details have emerged about the death of 12-year-old Alyona (name changed) at the Mechta country hotel. The girl drowned in the pool last weekend. Her father, Andrei, recounted the chronology of the fateful day in an interview with NGS55.RU.
The family, with four children, arrived for a holiday on 22 August to celebrate the birthday of Andrei«s wife. The very next day, 23 August, their daughter was gone.
How it happened
On Sunday the father stayed in the room with their one-and-a-half-month-old baby and their older daughter. Alyona went to the pool with her mother and 9-year-old brother. An instructor invited the adults to a sauna session. Andrei«s wife also went for the treatment, having first told the children to get out of the water and get dressed.
“My son went to get dressed. So when I came, I saw everything, he was already fully dressed. But Alyona decided to stay in the pool and dive a bit more. There was no briefing, no one told her off, her hair is very long. No one said anything. She had a hair tie on her hand. Her mother gave her everything, she was supposed to put it all on, but maybe it came undone. I don«t know why she had her hair loose. When they pulled her out, the hair tie was still on her hand,” the father recalls.
“They thought she was playing”
The girl kept swimming, but at some point her hair was pulled into the drain. Andrei stresses that at that moment there were many children in the water, including teenagers. However, when Alyona began to drown, the holidaymakers did not immediately realise what was happening.
“Not everyone understood, because it was all bubbling (the Jacuzzi was running in the pool — editor«s note), the water there is not clear. They said people on the cameras (referring to CCTV footage — editor»s note) even touched her. They thought she was playing, maybe, I don«t know. It»s terrible! They did not start rescuing her straight away,” the father says.
After some time people noticed the drowning child and tried to pull the girl out. But her hair was stuck fast in the drain. The schoolgirl spent 11 minutes underwater, as the hotel administrator who watched the camera footage told Andrei.
“The administrator came over and said: ‘We«re looking at the camera, we watched how many minutes she was there.’ She spent 11 minutes underwater. Eleven minutes. If it had been 2 minutes, yes, maybe they would have resuscitated her, probably. So there was no chance. 11 minutes is negligence.”
“She was waiting for 1 September”
Andrei says his daughter swam excellently — the family had holidayed on a lake in Kazakhstan, in Crimea and on the Black Sea coast. The girl did athletics.
The family had recently moved into a new flat, and Alyona was due to start at a different school.
“We submitted the documents to the school, she was waiting for 1 September, to go to a new school for the first time. She won«t be going now. We have the funeral tomorrow.”
The NGS55.RU editorial team expresses its condolences to the family and friends of the deceased child.
