Girl, 6, nearly drowns af ter her hair gets sucked into pool f ilter at 5-star resort
A GIRL of six almost drowned on holiday when her hair became caught in a swimming pool filter at a five-star resort.
Darcey Morgan was trapped under the water for at least two minutes and stopped breathing, her mother has revealed.
Two swimmers pulled her hair free and dragged her out of the pool. The schoolgirl was given CPR and regained consciousness
‘I just want to warn others’
at the poolside before being rushed to hospital where she stayed overnight. Her mother Alex Morgan, 32, said there had been another scare two days earlier when a nine-year-old boy’s shorts became stuck and other guests had reported the dangerous filter.
But she claimed nothing was done at the H10 Rubicon Palace in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands where the family was on holiday.
Mrs Morgan, whose family is from Leeds in northern England, said that when she spoke to a lifeguard, he replied: ‘I don’t know what you want me to do about it.’
The mother of three added: ‘People were coming up to me to say they had reported the filter to the hotel previously. At least three people told me they had reported it over the past two weeks. The hotel showed no sympathy and we had no apology.
‘The manager just said that in 15 years of that pool being there, they had never had any problems.’
Mrs Morgan, full-time mother to Darcey, two-year-old Inez and Theo, seven months, said the incident on April 22 was ‘the worst day of our lives’.
She added: ‘We’re struggling to come to terms with it. It was only after a man noticed she had been under for a while that she was found. The man was joined by a woman who was trying to pull Darcey’s head free, which resulted in her losing four clumps of hair.
‘But that’s nothing because hair grows back, life doesn’t. She had been underwater for at least two minutes when she was freed.’
Darcey made a full recovery after being kept in hospital overnight.
Ms Morgan and her husband Gareth, 35, reported the incident to tour operator First Choice and were given a full refund for the €6,411 two-week break. But Ms Morgan believes the pool should have been closed immediately.
She took to social media to share images of Darcey in her hospital bed in a bid to warn others of the dangers of pool filters. Ms Morgan said: ‘I don’t care about the money, I want to spread awareness of this and perhaps save another family from going through the same thing. I’ve had so many people contact me to say a similar thing happened to them on holiday.
‘One said their son had to have an operation following an accident with the pool filter on a different occasion in a different resort.’
A First Choice spokesman said: ‘We were extremely concerned to hear of this incident, the only one of its kind reported directly to us in the resort. We started a full investigation with external pool experts and our hotel partner.’