Hero girl, 11, drowns trying to save her little sister from hotel pool
An 11-year-old girl drowned to death trying to rescue her little sister in the deep end of a hotel pool.
Mackenzie Dawn Cornell, 11, was at a birthday party at a Quality Inn in Wheelersburg, Ohio, on Sunday when her nine-year-old sister went into the pool.
‘Her little sister went into the deep end of the pool and couldn’t swim very well and her big sister went to save her and she ultimately died,’ Mackenzie’s aunt, Helen Cornell, told WOWK.
‘There’s no greater love than giving herself for her sister.’
Deputies were called to the scene shortly after 6pm, said Scioto County Sheriff David Thoroughman.
Porter Township Rescue Squad members performed CPR on the sisters. Mackenzie’s sister was resuscitated, while the older sister was rushed to South Ohio Medical Center where she was later pronounced dead.
Mackenzie ‘was the happiest when helping others’, according to her obituary.
‘She enjoyed everything outside, always following her grandmother out to the garden and helping with anything going on outside. She was funny, brilliant and enjoyed drawing,’ it states.
‘Most of all she loved her sister, her cats and dogs.’
Mackenzie, of South Webster, was a ‘girly girl’ who loved shopping, especially at Claire’s Boutique.
She is survived by her sister, Mackenna Cornell; a brother, Jacob Cornell; her father; her grandparents who raised her; aunts and uncles and cousins.
A prayer vigil for Mackenzie was held outside Bloom-Vernon Elementary School on Monday.
‘Every time she came into class she had a smile on her face and very soft spoken,’ one of her teachers, Chad Benner, told WOWK.
Mackenzie’s funeral service will take place on Saturday afternoon at the elementary school and she will be interred at Vernon Cemetery.
She died five days after British schoolgirl Anna Beaumont, 13, drowned at a pool at Discovery Cove theme park in Orlando, Florida.
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