A hotel management company has said the parents of the eight-year-old girl who tragically died after being sucked into a pool pipe are to blame for the heartbreaking incident.
As previously reported, Aliyah Lynette Jaico and her family visited the DoubleTree by Hilton in Houston, Texas on March 23.
The young girl was surrounded by her loved ones when she spent time swimming in the "lazy river style" pool.
Tragedy struck when she suddenly disappeared, prompting a frantic search effort from her family.
The little girl was initially reported missing, with search teams called in to try and locate the child. However, security footage of the pool later revealed that the child had gone underwater and never resurfaced.
After 13 hours, Aliyah's lifeless body was found in a 30cm-wide pool tube, following the draining of the pool and the use of a camera to investigate the pipes, WIS10 reports.
Tim Miller - founder of Texas EquuSearch - described the tragic discovery, stating: "We put them poles in there almost 20 feet, and we saw her little hand and part of her body, so we got the fire department back out there."
“[It] appears right now the pump was put in there, and it was probably malfunctioning because of the open pipe that she ended up in was supposed to be pushing water out," he added.
According to The Mirror, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science determined that Aliyah's official cause of death was "drowning and mechanical asphyxia".
The child's family sued the management companies running the hotel, claiming the untimely death was the “direct result” of negligence at the property to maintain a functioning pool.
The files state that Aliyah “was swimming with her family” around 4:50PM when, she was allegedly “violently sucked into a 12 to 16-inch unsecured open gap in the swimming pool flow system of the hotel’s lazy river," as reported by PEOPLE.
Her mom, Jose Daniela Jaico Ahumada, “frantically” searched for her daughter before asking hotel staff to look at the surveillance footage around 5:20PM. However, her request was allegedly denied by management, which “explained that police would have to be present to view the video surveillance.”
But in documents filed this week, Northwest Hospitality Services, LLC, claimed that it was Aliyah's family who “engaged in negligent acts and/or omissions that proximately caused the alleged injuries and damages,” as cited by The Independent.
This comes after another company named in the suit, Unique Crowne Hospitality, made the same argument in April.
The Jaico family has hit back on the accusations, with their attorney Richard Nava saying: “A lot of people are making comments about her [the mother]… that she wasn’t there, she was missing or she may have been in the hotel room. None of that is true."
Nava stated that Aliyah may have been trying to save her five-year-old sister from being sucked into the pipe. The younger girl was later dragged out of the pool by a 13-year-old cousin, but by then Aliyah had gone missing.
“Her poor little body was contorted when she was sucked into this hole and pipe 20 feet back. Her body was inside of the motor when she had to be extracted," Nava said at the time. "They had to break up concrete in order to extract her, cut pipe. It was absolutely horrific.”
Our thoughts continue to go out to Aliyah's family and loved ones at this time.
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