Lifeguard says she gave Wolverhampton pool full attention

Kelly Woods is accused of failing to properly supervise pool users, including tragic eight-year-old Suraj Mall, at Wolverhampton Swimming and Fitness Centre in 2008.

During her trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court yesterday, jurors heard the witness statement Woods gave in the wake of the death, and also heard the defendant answer questions for the first time.

The 31-year-old, now of Woodland Avenue, Tettenhall Wood, Wolverhampton, said she continued to look at the pool despite answering questions from a customer, Barry King.

She said: "I wasn't paying much attention to him. I couldn't see him. I was looking at the pool. He wasn't obstructing my view of the pool at all."

Mr James Puzey, prosecuting, suggested to the defendant that her estimation that her conversation with Mr King lasted between two and three minutes was still longer than rules allowed for a lifeguard.

Woods added: "It was a very short conversation. I should have told him to go away. It didn't stop me scanning the pool. I was staring straight ahead."

Woods also disputed the account of two sisters, aged 12 and 10 respectively, at the time of Suraj's death, who said they found the boy drowned before the lifeguard herself noticed him.

"Nobody called out to me from the pool," the defendant told the court. "No one shouted me or I would have heard. The girls did not call out to me.

"I spoke to one of the girls and asked them to poke him to see if he was all right. My full attention was on the pool. There was no permanent obstruction, from where I was positioned, of my view of the pool.

"I cannot think of any reason why I did not see Suraj."

The court also heard witness Alex Gleeson, a lifeguard at the same time as Suraj's death, say a water feature in the pool, called an air quake, underneath where the youngster was found drowned had been removed afterwards.

When asked by Judge Amjad Nawaz why, Mr Gleeson replied: "Not for any reason that I'm aware of."

Mr Ben Compton QC, defending, also read out an agreed statement from Richard Wild, a senior forensic meteorologist at Weather Met, saying the sun had not yet set at the time of Suraj's death, between 4.30pm and 5pm on February 10 2008, and visibility was clear.

It emerged during the hearing that Woods kept her job as a lifeguard at the centre until early 2012. She was eventually suspended after she was sent a summons to attend court but returned to the centre in a different role helping the marketing team later last year.

Last week Suraj's mother Lalja broke down in the dock as she relived the horror of her son being dragged from the pool.

She had gone to the swimming pool with Suraj and his three siblings.

The trial continues.