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Young Girl Disemboweled By Pool Drain
(CBS) Minneapolis A six-year-old Edina, Minn. girl has been hospitalized after a horrific accident at a swimming pool.

Abigail Taylor was severely injured Friday when she sat over an open drain hole in a wading pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club.

Now Abigail's father has a warning to other families: Pool and hot tub drain accidents are a hidden danger that many of us don't understand.

Abigail has big brown eyes, a dazzling smile and at just six years old she has already competed in local swim meets.

"She loves to swim," said her father Scott Taylor.

Her love of swimming is why her family didn't think twice when she played at a kiddie pool similar at the family's golf club on Friday night.

Scott said as Abigail was getting out of the pool, she fell.

"She more or less blacked out, she passed out, fell face-first onto the pool decking," he said. The family thought it was a seizure.

An ambulance rushed her to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. Several hours later a surgeon said Abigail was lucky to be alive.

I left out the source of the injury so you could view at your own discretion. I still get the heebie-jeebies from it.

John Edwards won $25 million off of a similar case after the company settled for that amount. I think the issue in that case that their was not a warning sign in place.

I heard about this on the Tom Leykis show.

Thanks for omitting the injuries, when I first heard it, I laughed, then thought about what actually occured, and felt bad for the girl. Sucks to be her.

But, seriously, who sits over an open drain hole?

From what I've heard the country club didn't maintain the drain properly and the little girl was horribly maimed by it. This is a clear cut case of negligence and it's horrific to see a little girl pay such a terrible price.

I hope she's set for life when the lawsuits are all over.

The quoted article its self says the drain didn’t have a cover. However I’ve heard of exactly this sort of accident happening on a covered drain, though in that case the child died. You’re not really at any risk unless you TOTALLY block the drain, and at that point the victim (always a child) usually drowns since the suction is sufficient to keep them from reaching the surface.

These accidents simply should not be occuring any more. There have been instances for decades. The dangers are known. The solutions are simple:

1) For older pools where replacement revision is not practical secure drain covers designed to prevent a seal between buttocks and drain (and they do exist) need to be installed and properly maintained. If the cover isn't secure, close the pool.

2) All you need are two drain openings so that full suction can't be obtained by blocking just one (ideally, more than two would be better). If you can't get stuck, you can't get your guts sucked out and you can't drown by being held underwater.

As for the girl - there are really only two options for her going forward. Either she receives all fluid and nutrition through her veins, or an intestinal transplant. That sort of IV feeding can allow for growth an development, but within 5-10 years almost always results in severe, eventually fatal, damage to the liver and other organs because the human body did not evolve for such a nutritional system. At that point, intestinal transplant becomes the only option, but they are rather, difficult, and not as successful as other organ transplants. Very last option is a multi-visceral transplant, where all organs damaged by the multi-year intravenous feeding are replaced but that is a very dire circumstance indeed.

In other words, the outlook for this girl, even if she leaves the hospital, is quite grim. That doesn't mean she can't have good years and a good quality of life, at least for a time, but she will likely have an extremely shortened lifespan due to this accident. Really, even if they sue and win, no amount of money is going to fix this.

Darth Ruinus wrote:Sucks to be her.

Yes. Literally

But, seriously, who sits over an open drain hole?

Kids who are too young to have developed a sense of caution around such things. She is SIX, for cryin' out loud - six year olds require supervision because they do stuff out of ignorance, lack of experience, and lack of caution. It's not HER fault, she's not old enough to reliably make decisions concerning what is and isn't dangerous in her environment.

Why is this in Off Topic instead of N&P?

In any case, the place that owned the pool and the equipment manufacturer should be slapped with whatever they can be hit with and need to pay through the nose for the consequences. They should be made to foot all medical costs resulting from this, in perpetuity.

I have no idea at all why this sort of shit is even legal in tje US anymore. Here equipment like that would get shoved up the ass of whoever made it so fast their head would spin.

This is fucking horrible...

Edi wrote:I have no idea at all why this sort of shit is even legal in tje US anymore. Here equipment like that would get shoved up the ass of whoever made it so fast their head would spin.

Actually, in the US it's NOT legal to have a pool drain of that sort without a proper cover properly installed. However, laws are not always obeyed.....

Broomstick wrote:

Edi wrote:I have no idea at all why this sort of shit is even legal in tje US anymore. Here equipment like that would get shoved up the ass of whoever made it so fast their head would spin.

Actually, in the US it's NOT legal to have a pool drain of that sort without a proper cover properly installed. However, laws are not always obeyed.....

Then I wonder who will be brought to the inevitable civil suit. Will it be the tub manufacturer, the golf club, or both?

I suppose on the positive side, the family will soon have an assload of money handed to them.

Mr. T wrote:

Broomstick wrote:

Edi wrote:I have no idea at all why this sort of shit is even legal in tje US anymore. Here equipment like that would get shoved up the ass of whoever made it so fast their head would spin.

Actually, in the US it's NOT legal to have a pool drain of that sort without a proper cover properly installed. However, laws are not always obeyed.....

Then I wonder who will be brought to the inevitable civil suit. Will it be the tub manufacturer, the golf club, or both?

I suppose on the positive side, the family will soon have an assload of money handed to them.

It's the duty of the pool's owner to make sure that the drains are closed. I doubt there will be any liability on part of the manufacturer unless they failed to properly include instructions with the pool.

This just confirms my fear of pool drains all throughout childhood which continue ven to this day, I will not dive too close to the bottom of the pool if I'm near the drain.

Poor child, this is such a sad story.

I read a fictional story about this happening, but I did not know that this could realistically happen. I hope that the kid surivies, but Broomstick told it straight out.

Holy shit, that's just like what happened in Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I didn't think it actually happened.

Too bad it wasn't down here in Florida. We have an attorney, Morgan and Morgan (originally Morgan, Colling, and Gilbert, but Morgan was too estranged even for them, and started his own law company with his son). They're a bunch of shithead ambulance chasers who say, straight out, in their commericals that every company is out for cash at your expense and it's NEVER the victim's fault. He almost won a suit against a Little League team, their managers, and the parents of the kids because a guy who they didn't hire tried to help set up for a game and fell off a ladder. Seriously, if he got on this case, it would be his first straight game in years.

Rye wrote:Holy shit, that's just like what happened in Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I didn't think it actually happened.

I thought it was Guts by Chuck Palahiuk?

I admit that I never swim and don't know about pool drains but wouldn't this problem be solved by installing dome shaped convex grates over the drains?

General Zod wrote:It's the duty of the pool's owner to make sure that the drains are closed. I doubt there will be any liability on part of the manufacturer unless they failed to properly include instructions with the pool.

That's not how the system works in reality. The manufacturer will be hauled into court and sued for not making a perfectly child-proof system.

Although I agree with you, the majority, if not the entire, fault lies with the owners/managers of the pool

Falkenhorst wrote:I admit that I never swim and don't know about pool drains but wouldn't this problem be solved by installing dome shaped convex grates over the drains?

Yes, that's one solution - the point here is that while there was a protective cover for the pool's drain, it was apparently either not installed or improperly installed.

Anarchist Bunny wrote:

Rye wrote:Holy shit, that's just like what happened in Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I didn't think it actually happened.

I thought it was Guts by Chuck Palahiuk?

Guts is part of Haunted, it's the story of the character called "Guts-free."