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() Houston police are investigating the death of an 8-year-old girl who was found dead Saturday in a local hotel lazy river pipe.
The girl was identified as Aliyah Jaico by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, who ruled her death an accidental drowning.
Preliminary reports said she died from drowning and mechanical asphyxia, when an object or physical force stops someone from breathing. An autopsy report for the girl remains pending.
Police said Jaico was swimming with her family members in the hotel’s lazy river style swimming pool before she was reported missing around 5:45 p.m. local time. Investigators discovered the girl’s body inside a large pipe in the pool area at around 11:30 p.m., according to a press release.
Jaico was pronounced dead by paramedics at the scene, the report said.
A lawsuit filed Monday against the hotel by her mother, Jose Daniela Jaico Ahumada, alleges the child was sucked into an unsecured opening in the pool’s flow system that was 12 inches to 16 inches wide.
“They had to break up concrete in order to extract her, cut pipe, it was absolutely horrific,” Richard Nava, her mother’s attorney, said Tuesday at a news conference.
The family was staying at the Doubletree by Hilton Houston Brookhollow, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit along with Hilton Worldwide Holdings.
A Hilton spokesperson told the Associated Press that the company was deeply saddened by the girl’s death and noted that the property is independently owned and operated by a third party. The spokesperson said Hilton had not been served with a lawsuit and doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
A law office that the Hilton spokesperson said represented the hotel ownership did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Ahumada said in the lawsuit that she’d rented the room so her family could enjoy a day of swimming, an activity Jaico loved.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
