Dubai: A 10-year-old European girl drowned in a hot tub when her hair became entangled in the filter and she was trapped underwater, police said on Tuesday.
Colonel Ahmad Humaid Al Marri, director of Crime Scene Investigation Centre at the General Department of Forensics and Criminology at Dubai Police, expressed the force’s heartfelt condolences to the family, friends of the deceased.
Col Al Marri said that a Crime Scene Investigation team responded to a report about a girl who had drowned in her family’s one-metre deep hot tub in Bur Dubai area.
Investigations showed that the girl had drowned after her hair got entangled in the filter and she was trapped underwater.
“The young girl had asked for her father’s permission to use the hot tub. However, after sometime her father noticed her absence and rushed to the tub to find his daughter motionless and pinned at the bottom of the [hot tub],” Col Al Marri added.
Col Al Marri explained that the hot tub was moved to the Forensic Science Lab for further technical investigation by the Forensic Engineering Division, who discovered that the suction power across the tub’s holes was "unequal".
He added that Dubai Police’s forensic team detected a manufacturing defect where the tub’s drains had caused some strong swirls to effect on the water flow, sucking the hair easily.
“Yes, it’s easy for long hair, as well as limbs, jewellery, or pieces of a bathing suit, to become entangled in a swimming pool filter or drain, which is why children should always be taught to stay away from drains,” said the official.
“Children should always be supervised around water bodies especially swimming pools, hot tubs and open beaches,” Col Al Marri concluded.
