A young girl has tragically died after being sucked into a “malfunctioning” pipe in a hotel pool.
Aliyah Jaico, eight, vanished while swimming with her family at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Texas over the weekend.
She was found dead in the 30cm-wide pool tube 13 hours later, the New York Post reports.
The tragic disaster happened at a Houston DoubleTree as Aliyah swam with her family in the “lazy river style” pool on Saturday, police said.
The little girl was initially reported missing, with search teams called in to try and locate the child, according to KTRK-TV.
However security footage of the pool later revealed that the child had gone underwater and never resurfaced.
Aliyah’s body was found after the pool was drained and a camera was sent into one of its pipes, the outlet said.
“We put them poles in there almost 20 feet (610cms), and we saw her little hand and part of her body, so we got the fire department back out there,” said Tim Miller, the founder of Texas EquuSearch, the team called in to help find Aliyah.
“[It] appears right now the pump was put in there, and it was probably malfunctioning because of the open pipe that she ended up in was supposed to be pushing water out.”
Mr Miller said when Aliyah was found her body was “wedged in so very, very tight”.
“I don’t think she decided, ‘I am going to swim in here and see what’s here’,” Mr Miller speculated.
“Many of us had to wipe tears from our eyes. This is one of the saddest ones we’ve seen in a good while.”
According to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science, the girl’s preliminary cause of death was ‘drowning and mechanical asphyxia’ and appeared to be an accident, a report by MailOnline stated.
Aliyah’s devastated mother, Daniela Jaico, has since shared a heartbreaking selfie taken at the pool on Facebook, with captioning it: “Our last photo.”
“They say we all have our destiny marked…but I can’t understand why yours was like this, Jaico wrote in Spanish.
“Thank you, my love, for the eight years you gave me by your side.
“Thank you, my girl, for teaching me what love is and a noble heart.”
This article originally appeared on The New York Post and was reproduced with permission