A child drowned in a swimming pool while on holiday after slipping unnoticed through a sliding door of his family’s rented villa, an inquest heard.
Aydin Kamaly was 16 months old when his lifeless body was found floating in the water outside the accommodation in Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands in January.
His father Rumel Kamaly tried to revive him before he was taken to hospital, where doctors told the family that Aydin could not be saved.
An inquest at Poplar coroner’s court in London this week heard that Aydin had been playing in the living room of the villa watched over by relatives, as his parents packed upstairs for their flight home later that day.
Reading out a report written by Mr Kamaly, coroner Dr William Dolman described how a sliding door leading out to the swimming pool had not been shut properly, leaving a “small gap no larger than five or six inches. Aydin managed to open the small opening in the sliding door and go outside without any of the adults noticing”.
After searching for the toddler for a few minutes, Ms Chowdhury’s father noticed the open door. “When he went outside, he spotted Aydin floating on top of the swimming pool.”
On hearing relatives’ screams, Aydin’s parents rushed downstairs and Mr Kamaly gave his son CPR, while a passing motorist called an ambulance.
Dr Dolman recorded the death as an accident.
In the days after the tragedy on January 23, Mr Kamaly and his wife Fahmida Chowdhury, from Pinner, decided to launch the Aydin Foundation to “keep his memory alive”.
They have since raised about £45,000 for charitable projects around the world, including providing clean water for communities in Bangladesh and Mali.
Mr Kamaly, a company director, told the Evening Standard: “The amount of support we have got is overwhelming. Aydin was such a cheerful character. Everyone said he was an extrovert. We thought, ‘How do we keep his memory alive?’ For his name to live on?”
His mother, a solicitor, added: “He was advanced in comparison to all the kids. He was the first one to start walking around. A book was his favourite thing.”
