RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prayers and re­lief in Gas­par­il­lo on Fri­day af­ter a six-year-old girl was res­cued and re­vived from a pool, just days af­ter the coun­try was shak­en by the trag­ic death of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie, who died in a jet ski ac­ci­dent in To­ba­go. How­ev­er, the child re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion af­ter be­ing un­der­wa­ter for eight min­utes.

While fam­i­lies across Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ued to mourn Jo­gie’s death, loved ones of Sky­lar Gabriel gath­ered in hope, giv­ing thanks that the young child—who is autis­tic—sur­vived a near-drown­ing in­ci­dent at Bumper Jumperz Fun Park in Bonne Aven­ture, Gas­par­il­lo.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 1.20 pm on Fri­day, when PC Gar­cia, PC Ram­samooj and PC Sam­my re­spond­ed to a re­port of a child found un­re­spon­sive at the fa­cil­i­ty.

When they ar­rived, they met Sky­lar’s par­ents—De­sire Wal­ters, a 41-year-old fire­fight­er, and Shel­don Gabriel, al­so 41, a fire safe­ty of­fi­cer as­signed to Savonet­ta, Cou­va—who said their daugh­ter had been bathing in a pool with oth­er chil­dren when she was dis­cov­ered un­re­spon­sive. Wal­ters and Gabriel said that al­though they searched for their daugh­ter around the pool ar­eas, they did not no­tice her un­der­wa­ter un­til sev­er­al min­utes lat­er. They al­so said there were no life­guards or life jack­ets at the fa­cil­i­ty, not­ing that their daugh­ter was ac­cus­tomed to wa­ter, as it was not the first time she had vis­it­ed a wa­ter park.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the child had been in a pool lo­cat­ed on the south­ern side of the com­pound when she was pulled from the wa­ter by pa­trons. Emer­gency Health Ser­vices were im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed, and re­spon­ders re­port­ed­ly de­tect­ed signs of life be­fore rush­ing her to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. She was ad­mit­ted to the In­ten­sive Care Unit, where she re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion. Both par­ents said they were fo­cused on the re­cov­ery of their child.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the scene, video footage was shown in the mo­ments lead­ing up to the in­ci­dent. The footage showed Sky­lar sub­merged in a larg­er pool for ap­prox­i­mate­ly eight min­utes while her par­ents searched the com­pound try­ing to lo­cate her. They did not im­me­di­ate­ly search the adult pool.

A se­nior of­fi­cial at the fa­cil­i­ty said the child had ini­tial­ly been in a des­ig­nat­ed chil­dren’s area but lat­er moved un­su­per­vised to­ward a more crowd­ed sec­tion with a larg­er pool and slides.

“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.” There were two pool guards there at the time.

The of­fi­cial said the footage shows chil­dren con­tin­u­ing to en­ter the pool while Sky­lar re­mained un­der­wa­ter, un­no­ticed amid the ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Be­cause of the move­ment and the num­ber of peo­ple, no one re­alised she had gone un­der,” he added.

Sky­lar was even­tu­al­ly spot­ted by oth­er pa­trons, who pulled her from the wa­ter and raised an alarm.

The of­fi­cial al­so said staff were un­aware that the child was autis­tic and claimed she was not wear­ing any flota­tion de­vice at the time.

Po­lice have since re­quest­ed a med­ical re­port as in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent con­tin­ue.