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Graeme's pretending.' So I jumped in and that's when I saw her," she says. Graeme was on the floor of the hot tub, her limbs moving with the bubbles. "I tried pulling her up, but I couldn't. I know I kept coming up for air, and I was screaming bloody murder. I pulled and pulled, not understanding what was holding her down," she says.
Nancy finally jumped out of the hot tub to get help and collapsed on the yard. Two men pulled Graeme out, using enough force to shatter the flat 8 inch grate, which had suctioned her body to the bottom of the hot tub.
Though Graeme was quickly transported to a local hospital, it was too late. "I was sopping wet, wrapped in a blanket and sitting on the floor in the emergency room. When the doctor came out, I remember saying, 'You can not be here to tell me that she didn't make it. You cannot.' And he said, 'We did every thing we could, but we couldn't revive her.'
"I don't think there's anything worse. There isn't anything worse."
Eventually, neighbors took Nancy |
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home to
break the news to Graeme's sisters and her father, who was traveling on
business. "That night, I didn't know what had happened to her. I came to
understand it in the next few days. Someone said something about having
seen a program about it on '20/20,' and then I realized that she had been
pinned," she says The spa where Graeme was stuck had a single drain. Her body was able to cover the entire grate, generating hundreds of pounds of pressure that held her underwater for nearly 10 minutes. (See sidebar "What is suction entrapment?" above.) From January 1985 through March 2002, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety |
Commission recorded 1.47 body and hair entrapments, 36 of which resulted in death. These injuries range from hair becoming entangled in a drain cover to entire limbs getting sucked into uncovered drains. Unfortunately, the extent of the problem is likely understated because emergency personnel often classify entrapment related injuries as accidental drownings. Indeed, even on the police report investigating Graeme's death, the 7 year old is simply identified as "drown person." Soon after Graeme's death, a family spokesperson told Pool & Spa News that the Bakers would hold the industry accountable. At Graeme's funeral, her grandfather, James Baker, told Nancy, "This never should have happened. By all means, know that if you can try to change this, you'll have my help." Eventually, the Bakers would file a |
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