The distraught parents of a four-year-old girl who died after being pulled from an Egyptian swimming pool had feared their waterpark hotel was an “accident waiting to happen” before the tragedy.
Kelly and Thomas Maddison, from Bishop Auckland, visited the Jaz Makadi Aquqviva in Egypt for a holiday with their nine children for Christmas in 2017.
They told Newcastle Coroner's Court on Monday that from the start of the trip, booked through travel operator TUI, they “couldn’t relax” over health and safety fears including slippy floors and a door from their room which wouldn’t lock leading directly to a pool.
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And on December 21 the couple's worst fears were realised, when their daughter Indianna Maddison went into the water of that pool.
After attempts to treat her at local Aseel Medical Care Hospital, Indianna was airlifted back to Newcastle. She died on December 26, five days after being pulled from the water.
The court heard Kelly and Thomas had left the resort on December 21 with their two youngest children to collect some photographs, leaving Indianna and siblings in the care of sister Billie Jean, now 25.
When they returned, the little girl rushed to greet them, Thomas returned briefly to their room by the pool before going to get some food nearby. He said he had been aware of where Indianna was and had seen her near the steps of the pool with her siblings and had kept his eyes on her.
He had stopped to chat to other holidaymakers when he suddenly heard screams.
Thomas, 48, said: “There was a little boy who saw Indianna go into the pool and went to get his dad, but by the time he had told his dad Indianna had gone under. I saw him pull Indianna out of the water, I heard her bang her head as she came out of the water, her body was limp.
"There was nobody to control the crowd and get them to give Indianna space, it was chaos... My kids were running everywhere to get help but they could not find any lifeguards."
A friend the family had made on holiday managed to control the crowd and administered CPR at the poolside. When a doctor from the resort arrived on the scene, Thomas said, he merely "shook his head" after looking at the four-year-old's body.
An ambulance arrived after around 15 minutes, the court heard, but it was not staffed by paramedics and equipped only with an oxygen mask which didn’t fit the little girl’s face. In the ambulance, as Thomas and the friend continued to attempt resuscitation, she began breathing and her heart began to beat.
Despite their efforts, by the time she reached the Aseel Hospital, Indianna had gone around an hour without the necessary life support.
Medical expert witness Dr Kenneth Power told the court that after the roughly five minutes she'd spent underwater, Indianna's only possible change of survival would have been if she'd received "state of the art" life support immediately.
Despite this, medics at the hospital assured her family that Indianna’s condition was “thumbs up”. Although there were mixed messages and issues with communication, with family largely speaking to medics through a TUI rep who was supporting them, they said they were given heartbreaking false hope that their daughter would survive.
Doctors said Indianna could be flown home and arrangements were made for her to be airlifted to the UK with her mum on Christmas Eve.
Mum Kelly said: “There was never a doubt that Indianna was not going to be OK. We thought she might be disabled at most. I was so sure she was going to be OK. They said everything was good.”
She added: "We all thought she was going to recover, our family had even set the table for us to have Christmas with them."
But the air ambulance team raised concerns that Indianna might not be well enough to fly and when they finally arrived at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary on Christmas Day, doctors there delivered tragic news.
"They told me there for no hope for Indianna, they told me she had hypoxia. I was heartbroken and so shocked," Kelly said.
Paediatric pathologist Dr. Srinivas Annavarapu told the court that Indianna's cause of death was hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy caused by the length of time she was underwater. He said the youngster would already have had "irreversible" brain damage by the time she was pulled out of the water.
And Dr Power added that while there were “substantial criticisms” of the actions of the Egyptian hospital’s actions and their communication with the family, he did not believe that mistakes made in the hospital “altered the final fatal outcome”.
In his statement to the court, Thomas said that before the incident it was “one of those holidays where you couldn’t relax” because of safety concerns. He added: “Kelly and I did not feel safe at the hotel, there were so many issues… It just looked like an accident waiting to happen.”
Ahead of the hearing, he said he hoped it would provide "answers" for his distraught family.
He said: “It’s still so difficult to accept that our little girl’s no longer here. She always had a smile on her face and loved spending time with her brothers and sisters, who are also struggling to come to terms with losing her. It’s been three years but the pain is still so raw.
“While nothing will ever make up for our loss, and the inquest will be tough as we will have to relive everything we went through, we hope that it will provide us with answers.”
The inquest continues.
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