Theo Treharne-Jones: Kos hotel doors ‘opened easily by a child’
Theo Treharne-Jones, five, died after being found in a pool at a holiday village in Kos in June. …
Locked doors in apartments where a five-year-old boy died on a family holiday in Greece could be opened easily by a child, a pre-inquest review has heard.
Theo Treharne-Jones died after being found in a pool at Atlantica Holiday Village in Kos in June.
The coroner said his inquiry would focus on the “care taken to keep very young children such as Theo safe”.
Theo, from Merthyr Tydfil, died in hospital on 15 June.
He was on holiday with his parents Richard and Nina, siblings and extended family when he died.
Mrs Treharne told the hearing the family had stayed at the same hotel before, albeit in different apartments that had door chains inside the rooms to prevent children leaving.
“Half the hotel did have chain locks on the door. This part didn’t,” she said.
“You could turn them so that no-one could get in from the outside, but you could touch it with a finger and get out.”
Mrs Treharne said a couple had posted a review on a travel site saying their two-year-old child had been able to get out of the room so they “had to put a pram against the door for safety”.
Mona Bayoumi, representing travel firm TUI UK, told the inquest she understood the chains were being phased out by the hotel and that it used the “same door mechanism you would find in any hotel around the world”.
Assistant coroner Nadim Bashir said his inquiry would look at several issues including access to the pool from the bedrooms, the doors, “what sort of locks there were to prevent very young children going through doors”, and what restrictions there were on access to the pool.
Speaking about the inquest, he told Theo’s parents it was “limited what we can do seeing as this tragic incident took place abroad, the hotel is subject to Greek health and safety, not ours, and we cannot impose our regulations on them”.
There will be a further pre-inquest hearing in November.