Dive-computer evidence ignored after 12yr-old's death

Six weeks after the unexplained death of a 12-year-old girl on a scuba training course, investigators who failed to collect dive-computers at the scene appear still not to have analysed the data available from them – and one of the two dive professionals’ units is reported to have gone missing.

Prominent US lawyer, diver and explorer David Concannon, who has litigated in many diving-related cases, is giving his services pro bono to the family of Dylan Harrison from Rockwall, Texas. He has expressed concern that two months on they remain in the dark as to how and why their daughter died.

Kaufman County sheriff’s officers failed to retrieve and analyse data from the dive-computers worn by Dylan, her instructor, the divemaster and one of the other trainees in the group, according to a Fox News report on the incident.

The unit belonging to one of the two dive professionals present is since said to have been lost in a 27m-deep lake. The diving instructor, William Armstrong, is an assistant chief deputy with Collin County sheriff’s office.

Miscommunication

The class at which Dylan hoped to secure her open-water certification was held at the Scuba Ranch, a privately owned inland site in Terrell, Texas, on the morning of 16 August. The session was being run by Scubatoys.com of Carrollton, which claims to be one of the biggest dive-shops in the USA. 

Dylan had been looking forward to diving with her father and grandfather at the lake after getting certified.

The Scuba Ranch lake

Concannon has contacted other divers present on the day and says that Dylan was one of eight students accompanied by Armstrong and the unnamed divemaster. 

They descended to a 5m-deep platform, but after what Concannon describes as a “miscommunication between a student and the instructor” the trainee went to the surface, and Armstrong is said to have brought the other divers up. 

They then redescended but, while Armstrong and the divemaster say that they all filed down a descent line, at least one of the students has stated that everyone had descended at once. This is where the computers could provide definitive answers, says Concannon.

Once back on the platform, a headcount revealed Dylan to be missing. Members of the Dallas County sheriff’s office dive-team who had been training at the lake launched a search and found the girl at a depth of about 13m, some way from the platform.

‘All available evidence’

Kaufman County sheriff’s office says that the incident remains an open criminal investigation while “all available evidence” is followed up. Concannon, speaking to Fox News in mid-October, insists that he had been telling the office since early September that the dive-computers were key to the investigation.

“This is the first case I’ve had, out of almost 300, where answers have not been forthcoming, and evidence was not gathered at the scene or shortly thereafter, by the people who know what to do,” says Concannon. 

Likening failure to consider dive-computer data to ignoring the black box after a plane crash, he said: “If you are responsible for investigating the death of anyone, but especially a child, you should give those families answers as soon as you possibly can.”