woman whose husband and two children died in a Christmas Eve swimming pool tragedy in the Costa del Sol is on her way back to the UK.
Olubunmi Diya is due to return to London with daughter Favour, 14, later tonight – on the original flight her family were all booked to fly home on.
Mrs Diya has also hired a lawyer following the deaths of nine-year-old daughter Comfort, 16-year-old son Praise-Emmanuel, and husband Gabriel, 52, at Club La Costa World in Fuengirola.
Javier Toro, a lawyer based in the Spanish town, confirmed this afternoon he was representing Mrs Diya and her family.
The bodies of her loved ones will be repatriated once toxicology tests have been completed.
Mr Toro said: “I can confirm I am acting as the family lawyer and spokesman.
“We are participants in the legal proceedings which have been initiated at Fuengirola Court of Instruction Number Two.
“On Monday I hope to be able to see for myself the conclusions of the Civil Guard.”
He added: “With regards to the issue of whether Mrs Diya’s loved ones could swim or not, I don’t think there’s been any bad faith on anyone’s part. I just think there’s simply been a translation problem or a problem of misinterpretation.
“The only person who said she couldn’t swim and wasn’t in the water was Mrs Diya.
“It’s true she was asked if they had ever swam in the sea and she said ‘no’ and that she said her youngest daughter who died had always swum in places where she could touch the bottom.
“But I was present for both police interviews and she never said they couldn’t swim and nor did her older daughter.
“Mrs Diya said her younger daughter was having swimming lessons at school.
“Her husband was born in Nigeria and swam in a river when he was a boy.”
Mr Toro said the swimming pool where the triple tragedy happened was not the bog-standard pool with a swallow end and deep end.
The deep end was in the middle and swimmers found themselves in that part of the pool “when they least expected it” as they moved away from the swallow part.
He added: “The family thinks that something was wrong with the pool, whether it be the design or the suction or the temperature of the water and that there could be several factors that could have combined to cause this terrible loss of life.
“It may be that by law there didn’t have to be a lifeguard, although that is something that will need to be examined closely because we’re dealing with a pool which is used by tourists.
“From my own personal experience I can’t remember a hotel pool I’ve been in where there hasn’t been a lifeguard.
“Mrs Diya and her family weren’t hiring an apartment from a neighbour and going to a bog-standard private community swimming pool.
“My understanding is that if there had been a lifeguard this wouldn’t have happened.
“Mrs Diya’s aim right now is simply to find out first hand the cause of what happened and to ensure that people don’t cast doubt over her conduct as a mother and her approach to her children.
“They obeyed all the rules relating to that pool.”
He continued: “The mother and her daughter who are the only two surviving direct witnesses say that something strange or spontaneous happened with that pool, that something exceptional occurred, that whatever happened wasn’t normal.”
Mr Toro also said he wasn’t ruling out the possibility of asking privately-hired specialists to conduct new tests after he had read through the police findings.
CLC World Resorts & Hotels, who said earlier this week police had given them permission to reopen the pool before the Civil Guard rebuffed the claims, confirmed this afternoon afternoon: “CLC can confirm that the pool remains closed out of respect to the victims of this tragedy and that guests have been, and are being, directed to other pools.”
It comes as a war of words over what led to Mr Diya and his two children drowning intensified this afternoon with resort chiefs releasing a new statement.
In the statement Mrs Diya said: “I believe something was wrong with the pool that must have made swimming difficult for them at that point in time.”
However a spokesman for resort operators CLC World Resorts & Hotels responded: “Naturally we have heard the comments made on behalf of Mrs Diya in a widely publicised statement to the media.
“The claims made in that statement are directly at odds with the findings of the police report. This makes it clear that their exhaustive investigations have confirmed the pool was working normally and there was no malfunction of any kind.
“The police report containing full findings has been passed to us and also made public by the police.
“We would emphasise that these are findings of the police investigation and not our own internal findings as has been wrongly reported by some media.
“Our sympathies remain with the family at what we understand must be a stressful and desperately upsetting time for them.”
