Pastor who couldn’t swim dived into pool in bid to save his drowning children
THE BRITISH father and his two children who died in a pool during a Costa del Sol holiday did not know how to swim, relatives have said.
Gabriel Diya, 52, leapt into the pool to rescue his daughter Comfort, nine, after an attempt by his son Praise-Emmanuel, 16, failed.
Onlookers unsuccessfully tried to revive the three of them after they were pulled from the water at the Club La Costa World near Fuengirola on Christmas Eve.
Comfort had been playing in one of the resort’s 21 pools with her older sister Favour, 14. Mr Diya and his wife Olubunmi, 49, both pastors at a church in south-east London, are understood to have grown alarmed when their older daughter returned to their holiday apartment alone.
The couple, who were born in Nigeria but held British passports, rushed to the poolside where they found Comfort in distress in the water.
Witnesses described hearing screams, while Mrs Diya was seen leaning praying for them to come back to life as a tourist tried to revive them. Officials yesterday said that lifeguards were ‘not necessary’ at the unheated pool.
It was initially feared that the family may experienced difficulties with the pool’s pump system after Comfort’s swimming cap was found in a drainage grid. But police later insisted that tests had found no issues with the pump or filtration systems. As a result, officials gave the resort permission to reopen the pool yesterday.
The revelation about the victims’ inability to swim is thought to have been made by relatives in their statements to police. A police source said: ‘Investigators have been told the three relatives didn’t know how to swim or didn’t swim very well. That information is coming from the older sister of the girl who died.
‘Although there has been speculation about the pump system, investigators have found no evidence pointing to any anomalies like increased suction pressure.
‘The information that’s now coming from the family goes a long way to explaining this mystery because if you’ve got three people in a pool who can’t swim, it’s very easy to imagine a situation in which one pulls the other down.’ A witness who helped perform CPR on the pastor told how his wife prayed and touched her loved ones’ bodies to try to will them back to life. Josias Fletchman, from Manchester, said: ‘She continued praying even after the ambulance people had stopped trying to revive them.’
Mrs Diya is being comforted with her surviving daughter by relatives who flew to Spain from the UK. Neighbours at the family’s home in Charlton, south-east London, yesterday described them as ‘lovely, very kind and religious’. Pauline Hicks, 63, said: ‘I’m so heartbroken for the woman. They were all just so nice, they were always smiling.’ Another neighbour said: ‘The family were very respectful and kind. The children were so well behaved.’
Mr Diya was head of Open Heavens, a London branch of the Redeemed Christian Church of God network founded in Nigeria. His wife is an assistant pastor. Mr Diya, who also ran his own property business, is associated with a number of other Christian bodies. His widow is a systems analyst who owns her own software development firm. Praise-Emmanuel, a student at Bexleyheath Grammar School, is understood to have been born in Illinois.
Post mortem examinations at Malaga’s Institute of Forensic Medicine yesterday Wednesday confirmed the cause of death of all three Britons was drowning.
CLC World Resorts and Hotels said that staff were ‘devastated by the tragedy’. A spokesman for the Civil Guard in Malaga said: ‘The investigation is ongoing.’