Schoolgirl, 11, who drowned during waterpark birthday party wasn’t found by emergency services for more than an hour, inquest hears
- Kyra Hill, 11, had been at Liquid Leisure near Windsor when the tragedy occurred
A schoolgirl drowned at a birthday party at a waterpark after it took emergency services more than hour to arrive and find her in the swimming area, an inquest heard today.
Kyra Hill, 11, had been at Liquid Leisure near Windsor when she got into trouble in the pool and drowned on August 6 last year.
Emergency services were called to the swimming centre at 3.55pm with Kyra being found just after 5.10pm. She was then taken to Wexham Park Hospital where she pronounced dead.
Senior coroner Heidi Connor told Kyra’s family that a post-mortem examination gave the cause of her death as drowning.
She offered her ‘utterly heartfelt condolences at the loss of Kyra’, during a hearing at Berkshire Coroner’s Court.
Kyra Hill, 11, had been at Liquid Leisure near Windsor when she got into trouble in the pool and drowned on August 6 last year
Emergency services were called to the swimming centre at 3.55pm with Kyra being found just after 5.10pm
The coroner told the family that ‘we must stand back and allow other investigations to be carried out first’ by the local council and police force involved.
Kyra’s father, Leonard Hill, who attended the inquest with the girl’s mother Heather Parker, asked the coroner whether the cause of Kyra’s death was final and asked whether his daughter died at the hospital.
Ms Connor told the family: ‘A coroner’s inquest must be opened when the cause of death is unnatural and the coroner must answer four questions: who the person was, how, when and where they died.
‘As a coroner I wear two hats. The first hat is looking at those questions and into the past. The second is looking at the future and into something we call Regulation 28 and the possibility of making a report to prevent any future deaths.’
The family were told they would be able to share more information about Kyra’s life outside the ‘very difficult, traumatic evidence’ during the inquest into her death.
The bereaved father previously likened footage of the tragedy to a ‘horror movie’.
He said: ‘I’ve replayed the CCTV in my mind every day, every night. It’s like watching a horror movie. I replay my child on a hospital bed every day, every night.
‘I replay my child in the morgue, and touching her cold freezing stiff body with fluids leaking from her nose, every day and every night.’
Mr Hill also added that Kyra had not been playing on inflatables and had been in the area designated for swimming.
The coroner added: ”The cause of death is on her interim death certificate which can be used like a normal death certificate. At an inquest the coroner can change the cause of death if there’s evidence to but that is unusual. We have to remember that a verdict and a cause of death are two different things.’
Ms Connor explained the cause of death establishes the medical reason why a person died whereas the coroner’s verdict describes the way a death occurs.
A date for the inquest is yet to be set.
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