SHOCKING! Female Teenager Drowns In Delta Hotel Swimming Pool In Absence Of Life Guard

By Charles Nwabardi

What could have been a preventable incident has regrettably resulted in the death of a 14-year-old girl who reportedly got drowned in the swimming pool of Manuex Place Hotel in Effurun, Delta State.

AtlanticNewsonline sources disclosed that the incident which occurred Sunday afternoon threw guests and staff of the hotel into shock.

Some of those who witnessed the incident confided in our reporter that the teenager whose name was given as Miss Favour Appiah, died as a result of alleged negligence on the part of Manuex Place Hotel Management. A wailing family source told AtlanticNewsonline that there was no pool attendant when the incident happened.

It was gathered that the deceased was declared missing at the hotel premises by her relatives until her lifeless body was eventually discovered at the bottom of the deep part of the pool.

“We searched everywhere when we could not find her. We thought she might have gone to change her clothes but we did not see her until we drew the attention of the hotel staff to the incident.

“The pool attendant was not there when the incident happened and when he eventually surfaced, he refused to enter the pool to carry out any search and rescue mission. It was suspected that he could not swim. No one could see the bottom of the water.

“It was one of the receptionists who later resumed duty that chose to enter the pool to search if she was there. Lo and behold, she had drowned and was lying at the deep part of the pool”, one of the family members said.

The remains of the girl were later recovered and deposited at the Warri Central Hospital Warri, by management of the hotel.

However, the hotel management did not officially report the incident to the police until Monday noon. Neither did the family of the deceased do so before her corpse was taken to the hospital mortuary.

When contacted on Monday, the Manager of Manuex Place Hotel, who was simply introduced as Benie O. confirmed the incident but declined to give further details.

She promised that a staff of the hotel would call our correspondent for further details but no one had called at the time of filing this report on Tuesday.

Repeated efforts to get official response on the sad incident were rebuffed as calls to the hotel manager were not acknowledged.

The spokesman of the Delta State Police Command, DSP Bright Edafe, has confirmed the incident but said no arrest has been made in connection with it.

He told
AtlanticNewsonline that family of the deceased had taken the girl’s corpse to the mortuary before reporting the incident officially. He added that even though such incident was crime-related and could have warranted further investigation, family members of the deceased had requested the police not to go further as they were not prepared for any action.
“As far as they are concerned, the family members see the incident as mere drowning” Edafe said.

Manuex Place Hotels which is located on Jakpa Road, Effurun in Uvwie Local Government Area is one of the biggest hotels often used by several oil companies to quarantine their staff.