Case Summary: Abdul-Moeez Hayyat
Aug 24, 2021CASE SUMMARY
Abdul-Moeez Hayyat was 19 months old when he drowned in a swimming pool at a garden party at his grandparent’s home in Aylesbury on 6 April 2010. Whilst his family were in the kitchen, Abdul was playing football in the garden with his four-year-old sister and other family relatives.
At around 18:20, Abdul’s mother, Amna Khan, became concerned that she could no longer see her son playing football from the kitchen and proceeded into the garden to look for him. The family became concerned that he had wandered off into the street or been taken by someone when they couldn’t find Abdul.
It then dawned on us to check the swimming pool in the back garden. The open-air garden pool was 9 metres by 4 metres, with a 1.8-metre-deep end sloping to a 1.2-metre shallow end. When the family rolled back the pool cover, Anna started screaming as she saw Abdul’s foot under the water. Mr Khan said:
I very quickly jumped into the pool and grabbed hold of Abdul, who was face-down in the pool, motionless. Amna was screaming and crying.
Abdul was fully clothed and carried into the house by his grandmother. The family began CPR, which was later continued by paramedics, six minutes later. Abdul was taken to Stoke Mandeville Hospital but was pronounced dead shortly after his arrival.
The Coroner’s inquest was heard at the Stoke Mandeville Postgraduate Centre and was attended by Abdul-Moeez's parents and grandparents. The inquest heard that Abdul had only just started walking when in 2010, he fell through the cover into the shallower end of the pool, which could not be seen from the house because it was hidden by plants. There was no fence around the pool. Mrs Khan and Abdul-Moeez's father, Waseem Hayyat, a businessman who was not at the party, wept as the details of their son's final moments were recounted.
A post-mortem examination confirmed that he had drowned. Buckinghamshire Coroner Richard Hulett recorded a verdict of accidental death.
What happened is unfortunately very, very clear. When children begin to walk, and they usually do from 15 or 16 months onwards, they get quite keen to walk in the garden and also they are often attracted to water.
Garden ponds and garden swimming pools are a regular risk when they are that young. They will go to water but they have no means of saving themselves. It may be that all that happened is that he went out onto this cover. If there is any weight at all you will go through it and then what we have is obvious fatal consequences.
References
Note: I wish those affected all the best in their future. No part of this article purports to attribute blame. See our methodology page for further details of how these case summaries are constructed.
Daily Star. (2010). Toddler drowned at family party. (9th July, 16:31). Available at: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/toddler-drowned-at-family-party-18220450 accessed 24th August 2021.
Evening Standard. (2010). Toddler drowned at family party (9th July). Available at: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/toddler-drowned-at-family-party-6490356.html accessed 24th August 2021.
Express. (2010). Toddler drowned at family party. (9th July, 16:27). Available at: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/186034/Toddler-drowned-at-family-party accessed 24th August 2021.
Citation: Jacklin, D. 2021. Case Summary: Abdul-Moyeez Hayyat. Water Incident Research Hub, 24 August.
