Case Summary: Joshua Curtis-Moore
Dec 20, 2020CASE SUMMARY
Five-year-old Joshua Curtis-Moore, from Sale, Cheshire, was on holiday at the Castaways Beach Hotel, Porth, Newquay, with his parents (Mr Shaun Curtis-Moore and Ms Joanna Williamson) when, on the Tuesday 19th August 1997, he got into difficulty in the hotel swimming pool and subsequently drowned (The Guardian, 1999).
The hotel was operated by Mr Paul Burns and his wife, Ms Nita Burns. At around 15:30, Mr Curtis-Moore left his son playing with the other children in the pool. Joshua could not swim but was happily hanging on to the edge of the pool (Messenger, 1997). At 17:30, Joshua's mother, Joanna, became concerned that she had not seen Joshua for some time. The friends Joshua was swimming with checked the pool but could find no sign of him.
Joshua’s parents alerted the hotel manager Mr Burns, who also checked the pool but found no sign of him. Mr Burns checked the poolside but saw no sign of Joshua. Around 30 minutes later, Mr Burns returned to the pool with another hotel worker to check the bottom of the pool using a long pole, but again nothing was found. After 2 hours of searching later, Mr Curtis-Moore and Sergeant David Hurd went back to the pool and decided to check again. Sgt David Hurd said after the (Messenger, 1997; The Guardian, 1999):
Mr Curtis-Moore took off his shoes and socks, getting ready to dive in. I advised him to strip, but he jumped in fully clothed. After a moment, and to my horror, he screamed, dived beneath the water and produced the body of a small boy.
We pulled Joshua from the water and began attempts to resuscitate him.
From the poolside, you could not see the boy's body at the bottom of the murky hotel swimming pool the water.
Despite resuscitation efforts, Joshua was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital in Truro.
Investigation
The pool was inspected the following day by an environmental health officer from Restormel Borough Council (since 2009, now Cornwall Council), who said sediment on the bottom of the pool had been disturbed by swimmers. The trial continues (The Guardian, 1999). Officers reported that the hotel swimming pool was so murky it had to be searched four times before the boy was found, more than two hours after he disappeared. Following the accident, the Council's Environmental Health Department served the Castaways Beach Hotel with a prohibition notice ordering it to close until additional safety steps had been taken.
National guidelines (in 1997) allowed pools to be unsupervised, but only in limited circumstances. Access must be controlled, emergency procedures must be in place, and pool rules can be enforced by the hotel staff (Bence, 2000). Although the local authority was required to make arrangements for the enforcement of the HSWA 1974, it did not have a statutory duty to inspect the pool.
Restormel Borough Council has subsequently ordered its officers to take a tough line on the 140 hotel pools in its area in enforcing existing pool safety standards. Many hotels do not have full-time lifeguards (Bence, 2000).
Coroner’s inquest (1997) (Unreported, 21st November)
Coroner Dr David Bruce began the inquest into Joshua’s death on Friday, 21 November 1997, just three months after his death. The inquest heard evidence from an environmental health officer who visited the site shortly after the day of the drowning. He reported concerns about the water quality in the pool, which had obscured Joshua’s body under the water and was not visible to those who checked the pool during the crucial two hours in which he was missing. Witnesses from the hotel on the day Joshua drowned told the inquest that the water was “disgusting.”
The inquest also heard from swimming pool engineer, Mr David Bell, who told the coroner that he had been called to attend the hotel on 18 August (the day before the accident) to investigate the pool as it was too cloudy to open. Mr Bell described using chemicals to clean the water but admitted not instructing hotel staff to clean the bottom of the pool to remove sediment.
The inquest also heard how just five days before Joshua's death, another six-year-old boy, Daniel Cummings, had drowned at the bottom of another Newquay hotel swimming pool. His body had also been obscured for ten minutes by cloudy water before bystanders sounded the alarm. Recording a verdict of accidental death, Coroner Dr David Bruce said (Messenger, 1997):
If someone is in difficulty it is vital the rescue be immediate. If the victim cannot be seen they cannot be rescued. The water quality in this pool was totally unacceptable quality.
When Joshua went down no-one noticed, but they may well have if he had been visible at the bottom of the pool. This was a totally unacceptable water condition.
Mr Bell should have explicitly warned hotel staff to clean sediment from the pool before use, but I accept that neither Mr Bell nor Mr Burns had any qualifications in pool maintenance.
This accident in my view resulted from a combination of dubious pool design, an operator of limited understanding and advice given to the operator which was of dubious quality. These three factors combined to make this pool extremely unsafe, and they led to the loss of Joshua’s life.
Almost two years after the accident, Restormel Borough Council issued a warning to pool operators in the county, reminding them of their duty to ensure pool water clarity is regularly monitored. The statement concluded that if the bottom of the pools cannot be seen, then they should be closed immediately (Bence, 2000).
Charging decision
Following the accident, Mr and Mrs Burns, who owned Castaways Beach Hotel in Newquay, issued a statement denying they failed to adopt adequate safety measures at the hotel (Messenger, 1999).
Restormel Borough Council brought a prosecution against Mr Burns and Mrs Burns. They denied the charges at their first appearance at the Magistrates Court. The case proceeded to Truro Crown Court in June 1999.
R v Paul Malcolm Burns and Nita Burns (1999) (Unreported, Truro Crown Court, 22 June)
Mr and Mrs Burns appeared in front of HHJ Graham Cottle at Truro Crown Court for trial in the week commencing 22 June 1999, charged initially with seven offences related to the safety of their hotel. At the beginning of the trial, the prosecutor, Mr Peter Ashman, offered no evidence against Mrs Burns, who was promptly acquitted on the judge's instructions. The trial continued against Mr Burns.
The allegations made by the Prosecution were that Mr and Mrs Burns (i) failed to provide adequate and conspicuous safety notices within the pool area, (ii) failed to prevent unauthorised access to the pool, (iii) and failed to provide adequate precautions against unattended bathing by children (Bence, 2000).
Mr Ashman appeared for the prosecution. As part of the prosecution evidence, expert witness Dr Philip Penny said the hotel's pool was inherently dangerous and the worst he had seen in 40 years. It should have been closed in 1992, or a lifeguard employed whenever it was open, he said (Bence, 2000). Restormel Borough Council officials had assessed the Hotel as needing inspection every two years, but the Council environmental health officer Mr Richard Hooton told the court that the pool had not been inspected for seven years following a risk assessment in 1992 (Bence, 2000).
The court heard that Mr Burns had closed the pool because of cloudy water the day before the tragedy and until 14:30 on the day of the drowning (Bence, 2000). He had called in a specialist company to clear the water but had not been told of the need to vacuum sediment from the bottom of the pool.
At the conclusion of the prosecution case, Mr Burns changed his plea from not guilty to guilty and accepted the prosecution evidence as to the basis for sentencing. HHJ Cottle proceeded to hear submissions related to sentencing.
Mr Michael Melville-Shreeve, representing Mr Burns, submitted that since the accident, a bank had repossessed the hotel, Mr Burns now owed £300,000, and his marriage had broken down. He also told the court that Mr Burns had received hospital treatment for depression and was living on state benefit receipts. In imposing a conditional discharge on Mr Burns for a period of two years, HHJ Cottle said (Messenger, 1999; Bence, 2000):
I do not think imposing a financial penalty on Mr Burns is suitable in the circumstances. It also reflects my view, and I do not hesitate to express it, that Restormel Borough Council were quite seriously at fault in carrying out their duties which include failing to inspect the pool since 1992.
Joshua's parents, Mr Curtis-Moore and Ms Williamson, sat grim-faced in the public gallery during the trial. Afterwards, they said (Messenger, 1999):
We have got the guilty plea we wanted. We are satisfied justice has been done but we are still too upset at this stage to say any more.
References (4)
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.
Bence, D. (2000). Drownings lead to clampdown on hotel pool safety. (The Caterer, 1st January, 00:00). Available at: https://www.thecaterer.com/archive/drownings-lead-to-clampdown-on-hotel-pool-safety accessed 20th November 2020.
Messenger. (1997). Coroner slams murky hotel pool in toddler death inquest. (21st November, 00:00). Available at: https://www.messengernewspapers.co.uk/news/7235727.coroner-slams-murky-hotel-pool-in-toddler-death-inquest/ accessed 20th November 2020.
Messenger. (1999). Guilty plea on pool death. (8th July, 00:00). Available at: https://www.messengernewspapers.co.uk/news/7232429.guilty-plea-on-pool-death/ accessed 20th November 2020.
The Guardian. (1999). Boy’s body lost for two hours in hotel pool. (22nd June, 01:34). Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/jun/22/2 accessed 20th November 2020.
Citation: Jacklin, D. 2020. Case Summary: Joshua Curtis-Moore. Water Incident Research Hub, 20 December.
