Parents of last missing Camp Mystic victim sue owners over safety failures

The parents of an eight-year-old Camp Mystic attendee who disappeared in last year’s flooding are suing the camp over its failure to protect the children under its care.

Cecile Steward, who would have turned nine last month, was among 130 people killed when the banks of the Guadalupe River burst in July and engulfed the site of the Christian girls’ camp in Travis County, Texas.

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She was one of the 27 children and counsellors from the camp who died in the flood, but unlike those victims, her body was never retrieved.

In an Instagram post written by Cecile’s parents, Will and CiCi Steward, shared on their behalf last August, they said they were “shattered” by the tragedy of their daughter’s fate.

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“To the brave search and recovery crews who have been working tirelessly to find Cile and bring her home: there aren’t words sufficient to express our thanks,” the statement said.

The girl’s parents told Today co-host Jenna Bush Hager in an interview with NBC that they had filed a lawsuit against the Eastland family, which has operated the camp since the 1980s.

The couple’s lawyer, Brad Beckworth, told the U.S. outlet that the Eastland family was “completely unprepared” for an emergency, despite the camp being located on a well-known floodplain. The Stewards also argue in the lawsuit that the family repeatedly ignored National Weather Service flooding alerts.

By the time they began evacuating girls, it was too late, the lawsuit contends.

Richard Eastland, the owner of Camp Mystic, was among the victims. His family says he died trying to save the girls.

In the lawsuit, the Stewards claim that Richard and his son Edward waited for more than an hour before beginning cabin evacuations and contended in their interview with Bush Hager that it was the camp counsellors and emergency services who were responsible for saving most of the girls on-site when the flooding began.

“There are heroes at Camp Mystic, and none of them are named Eastland,” CiCi Steward said.

The couple, who lives in Austin, Texas, are seeking more than $1 million in punitive damages, according to the lawsuit.

The Eastlands’ lawyer, Mikal Watts, told NBC News that the family “intend to demonstrate and prove that this sudden surge of floodwaters far exceeded any previous flood in the area by several magnitudes, that it was unexpected and unforeseeable, and that no adequate early warning flood systems existed in the area.”

The Eastland family is reopening the camp this summer, a move the Stewards say they cannot comprehend.

“We’re not opposed to children going to camp. We’re opposed to the Eastlands, the audacity of sending out deposit slips when our child, one of their campers, who they’ve professed to love in this community, is still missing,” her husband added.

At the time of the disaster, almost 700 girls were boarding at the camp.