Abbey and her brother Austin were holidaying in Mexico with their parents. The family were staying at the luxury five-star resort, Paraiso del Mar.
Before dinner, 20-year-old Abbey and 22-year-old Austin decided to get a few drinks at the poolside bar.
When the pair didn’t show up to meet their parents, John and Ginny asked reception to phone their children’s rooms. It was then that they found out Abbey and Austin had been rushed to hospital after being found floating unconscious in the hotel pool.
Though Austin managed to survive, Abbey was in a coma and later announced brain-dead.
Six months later, her heartbroken family still doesn’t have answers as to how their children ended up in the pool.
Abbey’s death certificate declared the young woman had died from an “accidental drowning”. But her blood alcohol level was 0.25, leaving her family to believe she may have been drugged, reports The Daily Mail.
Austin says the last thing he remembers is drinking a shot of what he thought was Jagermeister and Red Bull with a group of men they met at the bar. They had planned to meet their parents at 7pm, and weren’t wanting to get too drunk beforehand.
“I’ve been in college for five years and had my fair share of drinks before,” Austin said. “No way in hell I’m putting my face down in a pool and going to sleep.”
“Knowing that we got played or are victims of some sick person drugging us is almost surreal,” he said.
While the drowning itself is already bizarre, the way authorities dealt with the event is even more so.
Mexican investigators only interviewed three hotel staffers in relation to the incident, the Journal Sentinel reports, and furthermore, police notes failed to document where the interviews took place.
Grieving mother, Ginny said no one from the luxury resort spoke to them after her daughter’s death.
Her husband, Bill, says he is still waiting for his daughter to walk through the door.
“If it was an accident, where was everybody? It just doesn’t make sense. There are too many open ends,” the family’s lawyer Florentino Ramirez told The Daily Mail.
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