RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

A six-year-old girl is fight­ing for her life af­ter be­ing found un­re­spon­sive in a pool at a chil­dren’s recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ty in Gas­par­il­lo on Fri­day af­ter­noon.

Video footage ob­tained by in­ves­ti­ga­tors shows six-year-old Sky­lar, who is autis­tic, re­mained sub­merged in an adult pool for around eight min­utes while her par­ents searched the fa­cil­i­ty for her.

Po­lice said the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 1.20 pm at Bumper Jumperz Fun Park along Morash Av­enue, Bonne Aven­ture, af­ter re­ports of a child in dis­tress.

Of­fi­cers from the Gas­par­il­lo Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed and met the child’s par­ents, 41-year-old fire­fight­er De­sire Wal­ters and 41-year-old fire safe­ty of­fi­cer Shel­don Gabriel, both at­tached to Savonet­ta, Cou­va.

The cou­ple told po­lice their daugh­ter, Sky­lar Gabriel, had been in a pool with oth­er chil­dren when she was dis­cov­ered un­re­spon­sive.

Emer­gency Health Ser­vices per­son­nel lat­er ar­rived and re­port­ed­ly de­tect­ed signs of life be­fore rush­ing the child to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. She was ad­mit­ted to the In­ten­sive Care Unit, where she re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were told the child had been bathing in a small pool on the south­ern side of the com­pound when the in­ci­dent oc­curred. Pa­trons at the fa­cil­i­ty pulled her from the wa­ter and alert­ed emer­gency ser­vices.

Po­lice said a med­ical re­port has been re­quest­ed as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred dur­ing a busy pe­ri­od at the fa­cil­i­ty, where chil­dren were us­ing mul­ti­ple pools and slides.

A se­nior of­fi­cial at the park said sur­veil­lance footage showed the child mov­ing from a des­ig­nat­ed chil­dren’s area in­to a larg­er pool used by old­er pa­trons.

“The cam­era would show that the child was in the kids’ pool un­su­per­vised. She left and went up to the big slide,” the of­fi­cial said.

“There were a lot of chil­dren there, so the work­ers couldn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate whether she was with a group.”

The of­fi­cial said the child en­tered the adult pool and went un­der­wa­ter amid on­go­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in the area.

“As you saw in the footage, chil­dren con­tin­ued to slide in­to the pool. Be­cause of the move­ment and the num­ber of peo­ple, no one re­alised she had gone un­der,” he said.

He said the video showed the child’s par­ents search­ing the com­pound dur­ing the pe­ri­od she was sub­merged.

“It is un­for­tu­nate… if the par­ents had looked in­to the pool, they would have seen her,” he said.

The of­fi­cial said staff were not aware the child was autis­tic or un­able to swim and said no flota­tion de­vice was be­ing used at the time.

He said the fa­cil­i­ty pro­vides life vests and floata­tion aids and stressed that su­per­vi­sion rules are in place.

“Our guards are here to re­spond, but it is dif­fi­cult to have one staff mem­ber as­signed to each child when there are large num­bers of pa­trons,” he said. “Par­ents must su­per­vise their chil­dren at all times.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.