My little girl’s drowned because of my stupidity
Mother’s anguish after toddler she left in car dies as it rolls into river
A TWO-YEAR- OLD girl drowned when the car she had been left in rolled down a slipway into a freezing river.
Kiara Moore’s mother Kim Rowlands, 25, briefly left her in the silver Mini while she went into the office of her partner’s outdoors activities firm.
She returned moments later to find the car had vanished. Frantic with worry, she called 999 to report the car stolen and appealed for help on Facebook.
After a two-hour police search, the vehicle was found submerged in the River Teifi in Cardigan, West Wales, about 150 yards downstream of the slipway.
Officers leapt in to the frigid waters and pulled Kiara to the surface before an air ambulance took her to University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. Despite multiple attempts to revive her, she was pronounced dead – just over a week before her third birthday.
Miss Rowlands wrote on Facebook yesterday: ‘Sadly yesterday my beautiful baby girl passed away!
‘Due to my own stupidity, I will have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life! Mummy loves you, baby girl, and I’m so sorry!’
Kiara’s father Jethro Moore, 40, said in a Facebook post that Miss Rowlands had parked her car outside his business to pick up some money after her bank card snapped.
The company director said of his daughter: ‘She was an incredible, happy young girl who lived, I hope, a great, adventurous, fun life and may have done more than most people. She had been skiing twice and skied herself! Paddled the Great Glen in Scotland. Paddled the Wye. Played on every beach we could. Had a loving family and made us all happy.
‘She always wanted to be called Rar Rar which was our nickname for her. Love her so much.’ He added: ‘A mega thank you to the officers who jumped in the river and the rest of the emergency services for all they did.’
Kiara’s grandmother Glynis Moore told the Mail: ‘It’s terrible. We are all absolutely devastated. It’s difficult to know what to say or what to do. My son has two other children. He has got to think of them. It’s hard to know what to do for the best.’
Miss Rowlands had left her car at the top of a 5ft-long slipway used to launch canoes and kayaks. The new Mini was equipped with a button brake, rather than a traditional handbrake, and inves- tigators are examining the possibility it either failed or was not activated. Ola Kowlaow, 28, described the heartbreaking moment she saw Miss Rowlands in tears frantically looking for her car. She said: ‘I asked her what happened and she said: “Somebody has kidnapped my kid. My daughter is in the car.” I checked the water but I didn’t see anything and she just ran.’ Noel Lewis, who owns the Pioneer Garage on the other side of the slipway, said: ‘Kiara was the most wonderful little girl. She was always playing out here with her little dog. Her parents run an outdoor adventure business on the other side of the slipway. ‘I’d often see them taking Kiara out on the river in a canoe. They’re a lovely family, always smiling and having fun together.’ Of the slipway, he said: ‘It’s concrete, about four or five foot, going down into the river bed, which is quite deep, so if the Mini rolled back then the poor little girl didn’t stand a chance.’ The couple’s neighbour Christine Scott, 74, said: ‘They are a busy couple and very fit. You would see them both running around the village together with their daughter in one of those three-wheeler pushchairs at the weekend.’ A spokesman for Dyfed-Powys Police said: ‘We are working to establish exactly what has happened. Members of the family are being supported at this very difficult time.’ Detectives are appealing for witnesses who saw the Mini enter the river on Monday afternoon. No arrests have been made, and an inquest is due to be opened.
‘I will have to live with the guilt’