Mother speaks out after 5-year-old daughter drowns at hotel pool party
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – Police say a child accidentally drowned at a hotel pool at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront Saturday night.
Dispatchers say they received a call for an ‘incident’ in the 900 block of Atlantic Avenue around 8 p.m.
24-Hour News 8’s sister station WAVY spoke with the mother of the child Sunday night.
“My baby is gone I’m not going to see her smile anymore,” said Dashelle Spencer.
Spencer says the last time she saw her five-year-old daughter, Skylar Alexander-Speller’s vibrant smile was right before she was picked up for her cousin’s hotel pool party at the SpringHill Suites on Saturday.
“She grabbed her bags, she gave me a hug and a kiss and said ‘I love you mommy I’ll see you tomorrow’,” she said.
Later that evening, she was called and asked to come to a local hospital.
“When I got there, they were still working on her then five minutes later they came and said she was gone,” Spencer explained.
Spencer says her daughter couldn’t swim and it’s all still unclear about what exactly happened that evening.
“I couldn’t believe it I just dropped and started crying, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t feel my legs, I felt so numb like this can’t be true this is a bad dream this is a bad dream,” said Spencer.
She says one of the kids at the pool party told her a man was walking past the pool when he noticed Skylar in it. It was also said he jumped in and got her out.
Spencer still has a lot of questions about what happened. “So many people keep on saying the pool was packed the pool was packed but if the pool was packed how did my baby drown? How? How?”
She’s hoping the hotel had cameras, so she can figure out what happened. “Anything that can show me what really happened I want to know was she being watched, I want to know was anybody paying attention to the kids, what feet deep water she was in, or how long she was in the water I don’t know any of this.”
Spencer tells me the one thing she does know is that she will never be able to fill the space in her heart the loss of her daughter Skylar has left behind. “She had so much energy her smile was breathtaking,” described Spencer.
She says she’ll start working on the funeral arrangements Monday.
WAVY reached out to the SpringHill Suites, but they didn’t give a statement.
The investigation is ongoing.