Costa del Sol: Pool deaths investigation can be closed, say Spanish police

Police investigating the deaths of a British man and his two children in a pool at a resort on the Costa Del Sol have said the case can be closed after concluding their initial report.

Gabriel Diya, 52, his daughter Comfort, nine, and his son Praise-Emmanuel, 16, drowned on Christmas Eve.

A police spokesman described it as a freak accident and put it down to a lack of swimming ability.

But Gabriel Diya’s wife, Olubunmi, wants the investigation to continue.

Police have handed the conclusions of their initial report to a Spanish magistrate and the findings will be made public soon, according to the BBC’s Europe reporter, Gavin Lee.

The spokesman said that, from what they have seen, there is no accountability on the part of the hotel.

• Tributes paid to family who drowned at resort
• Man and children drowned ‘in tragic accident’

However, speaking to the BBC, Olubunmi’s lawyer, Javier Toro, questioned the thoroughness of the police investigation – and the recommendation it can be closed after one week.

Mrs Diya has previously said that all three family members could swim and she believes there was a fault with the pool.

The police spokesman’s comments come after a statement issued on Saturday, which said the incident was a “tragic accident” caused by a “lack of expertise” in swimming.

They said divers retrieved Comfort’s swimming hat from the pool pump but investigators had found nothing wrong with the pool. An autopsy of the bodies found they died by drowning.

The hotel operator, Club La Costa World, has said Mrs Diya’s claims were “directly at odds with the findings of the police report” and “their exhaustive investigations have confirmed the pool was working normally and there was no malfunction of any kind”.

Mr Toro has previously told the BBC that many unanswered questions remained, including why no lifeguard was present at the time, which he claims could have saved the lives of the family.

He said the first responders to the scene were three cleaners who could not swim, and that they had to wait several minutes to get help.

Mr Toro said: “It’s very rare for three people to die in the centre of a swimming pool – especially in the case of a tall, hefty man.”

The family is “not satisfied with the interpretation of it being a simple accident”, he added.

“We do not discard the option of opening a parallel investigation through different engineers… to figure out what happened.”