HOUSTON – The City of Houston has five permitted lazy river-style pools, including at the northwest Houston DoubleTree by Hilton hotel where a young girl was tragically killed over the weekend.
The Houston Health Department inspects commercial pools in the city on an annual basis, according to the city’s permitting website.
But in response to a question from KPRC 2 about whether the HHD’s inspections differ when it’s a lazy river-type pool as opposed to a standalone pool, a spokesperson said. “There is no distinction.”
The five lazy river pools, according to a city spokesperson, are in zip codes 77025, 77042, 77339, and 77040.
Questions are still swirling about what caused 8-year-old Aliyah Jaico to drown and suffer mechanical asphyxiation after disappearing in the DoubleTree by Hilton Houston Brookhollow hotel’s lazy river on Saturday evening.
In a wrongful death lawsuit filed Monday by her family, it’s alleged that Jaico was “violently sucked” into an unsecured open gap in the swimming pool flow system.
“Aliyah was possibly trying to help her sister, who might have also been drowning by being pulled into this pipe,” attorney Richard Nava said at a press conference Tuesday. “Aliyah was violently sucked into the hole that was about 12 to 16 inches wide. Her poor little body was contorted when she was sucked into this hole and pipe 20 feet back.”
Texas EquuSearch founder Tim Miller helped search for Jaico and recover her body. At the press conference, he said the speculation is that a pipe meant for pushing water may have actually been pulling water and not covered with a grate.
“For her body to be that far up that pipe, there certainly appeared at that point in time would be some malfunction,” Miller said. “Her little body was all the way to the pump, so it took it in there a good distance.”
Hilton as well as the local owner and operator of the DoubleTree were named as defendants in the lawsuit.
“Hilton does not own, manage, or control the day-to-day operations of the property and does not employ any of the property’s staff or its third-party operators,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.
The local owner and operator, listed in the lawsuit as Unique Crowne Hospitality LLC, has not responded to requests for comment, nor has a law firm the Hilton spokesperson said represented them.
The gruesome details that are known so far make the tragedy a rarity, which the National Drowning Prevention Alliance said may not have been preventable with traditional techniques.
“It comes down to making sure children are staying away from any mechanical operations of the pool, and that includes any of the piping systems, the drains, anything that is creating, that circulation of water,” CEO Adam Katchmarchi said. “This was likely engineering or an operation or a mix of both ... where the error occurred, which you know, makes this incident all the more horrific.”
Katchmarchi said extra mechanics come into play when creating the fake current for a lazy river, but each operate differently, and some settings can be changed.
City inspectors found multiple violations Monday and ordered the pool facility closed until further notice. It’s unclear if those violations contributed to the drowning death.
Jaico’s family plans to lay her to rest on Thursday.