It was supposed to be a fun getaway for Destiny Morgan and her children: a chance to glide down waterslides, float along the lazy river and enjoy what Morgan thought would be a safe, family-friendly vacation.
Instead, the 2021 trip to Crown Reef Beach Resort and Waterpark in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, abruptly turned to horror when Morgan’s youngest child, 4-year-old Demi Williams, drowned in one of the resort’s pools, which had no lifeguards attending to it and was poorly lit, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
Morgan said a nurse tried to help Demi once she was pulled from the water, and that the nurse said she detected a faint pulse. Other guests at the resort then scrambled to find a defibrillator on the property to resuscitate the little girl, Morgan added. But defibrillators, which may pose a risk of electrocution to rescuers when used on drowning victims, are not required by state law to be placed in swimming areas, and the resort guests could not find any.
Demi is at least the third child to have fatally drowned at the resort between 2018 and 2021, including a 5-year-old boy who drowned days after Demi, news reports and a previous lawsuit show.
Now, Morgan is hoping to change the resort’s safety protocols.
“Something has to be done,” Morgan said in her first interview since Demi died on April 1, 2021. “I have to do something in honor of my child to make sure that this never happens again.”
The wrongful death lawsuit accuses Crown Reef of creating “unsafe, dangerous, or defective” conditions by failing to have a lifeguard on duty and failing to provide an adequate number of staff members to protect guests, among other allegations. It blames Demi’s death on Crown Reef’s “negligent, reckless, willful” actions.
Crown Reef’s general manager and an attorney for the resort did not respond to multiple emails and voicemails from NBC News. An employee who answered the phone at the resort said she did not have any comment.
Morgan said…
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