I work as a pool maintenance technician in Texas. There are laws that are pretty strict for public pools for anti-entrapment drains

From what I’ve been able to read and from what I’ve read from interviews, the pipe was like 6" wide and didn’t have a cover. I believe it was a wall return that she was sucked into. But it was plumbed backwards and so it was pulling water instead of pushing

I work with multiple river pumps and they’re frequently the biggest pumps in the pump room. So the water they return is at a pretty high flow rate and none of them have a cover on the pressure side. The ones I work with have multiple openings of an inch or two

But the main reason this happened was someone fucked up with plumbing the pump and used the discharge side for the pressure side. No idea how someone wouldn’t notice

I think I read that they didn’t disclose that they were renovating and adding a river. No idea why it wasn’t looked at either. So, so, so many levels of failure lead to this

I work in the pool industry. From my understanding, she was sucked into a water return so there isn’t regulation requiring a cover

It’s like being sucked into the end of a fire hose, there isn’t a cover because it’s supposed to pushing water out so a cover wouldn’t help

If I remember right, the pool was recently renovated so I believe they plumbed it backwards. So the water was returning through a screen