Providing closure amid controversy in the Adrianna Younge tragedy

Dear Editor,
A family: grandmother and aunt; two young girls, one 11 years old and one 8 years old; and a young boy 6 years old, go on a family outing to a hotel swimming pool to go swimming. After they had been there for a while, the grandmother notices that the 11-year-old girl is not with them. They look for her, can’t find her, and become alarmed.
I remember almost exactly the same thing happening to me many, many years ago. My wife and I, and my young daughter, who was around the same age, went swimming at a club with a swimming pool. We were all sitting down together having a drink near the pool when I noticed that my daughter, Ayla, was not with us. I did what any father in those circumstances would immediately do. I went straight to the swimming pool to look for my daughter, and got there just in time to see her diving into the pool off a diving board at the pool, and then floundering in the water. Naturally, I dived in after her and pulled her out.
That, sadly, is not what appeared to have happened with young Adrianna Younge; who went missing from her family on 23rd April, when they all went swimming at the Double Day International Hotel pool.
In spite of all that has been written and reported, it remains unclear just how long a time elapsed from when Adrianna’s grandmother noticed her missing and they started to look for her. What also remains unclear is whether they first and immediately searched for her in the swimming pool where she had been swimming.
Reports indicate that they first went to the front desk looking for her, and then, it is reported, they looked for her at the pool, and did not find her.
Also very unclear is who looked for her. Did they sound the alarm and clear the pool from other persons who must have been swimming in it? Was the pool thoroughly searched, by not only looking into the pool, but by someone getting into the pool and searching every inch of the bottom of the pool? None of that seems clear, and all of that, given everything that happened thereafter, needs to be subjected to a thorough investigation.
All the while, an increasingly distressed mother missing her child is eventually to learn, some 20 hours later, that she had been discovered under the water in the pool, and the nation grieves with her.
Again, from what was reported, the matter was then brought to the attention of the police, and again there is controversy as to whether the police ordered and carried out a complete and thorough search of the pool and the entire hotel premises.
It appears that they did not do so, and that the police response to an escalating panic and anger was wholly inadequate, including even issuing an entirely false report that Adrianna had been seen on a camera leaving the hotel premises, resulting in all that has followed.
It did not take long for politically-driven, organized and financed violent protest to take place; which has done nothing but exploit the family in distress and serve to further the aims and objectives of the political parties determined to remove the governing PPP by any means, fair or foul.
A plethora of opinions, accusations, rumours and misinformation has flowed across social and established media. Some of it genuinely sincere, but most of it thoroughly disgraceful, irresponsible and dangerous.
Our government has, so far, done all it can to respond to the needs and demands of the family and the situation, which continues to be exploited. It now needs to get on top of, and fully in control of, this matter by ensuring a professional investigation is conducted, meeting international best practices and standards and, most importantly, providing closure to the family who have suffered this tragic loss.

Yours sincerely,
Kit Nascimento