Girl on Tour Drowns in Her Hotel’s Pool : Tragedy: The 12-year-old had arrived with group from Mexico hours earlier. Non-swimmer was found under water with more than a dozen people nearby.

A 12-year-old girl who arrived here Thursday morning for a weeklong sightseeing trip drowned in a hotel pool as more than a dozen children and adults played and talked nearby, police said.

About two hours after arriving at the Days Inn with a tour group from Chihuahua, Mexico, Krishna Yahaira Martinez de Merino rushed out to the pool at the rear of the hotel at 1600 E. 1st St., said her mother, Irma Martinez de Merino, speaking in Spanish.

Police said it was unclear if Krishna jumped into the pool or fell in. Family members said she was athletic but did not know how to swim. She was found unconscious under 5 1/2 feet of water shortly before noon, fire officials said.

Krishna was pronounced dead at 12:30 p.m. at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, said Santa Ana police spokeswoman Maureen Haacker. An autopsy is scheduled for today, according to the county coroner’s office.

“Every child is important, but some are outstanding, and she was one such child,” said Martinez de Merino, 46, the mother of five and an instructor at Centro de Bachillerato Tecnico-Industrial, a college in Chihuahua.

For Martinez de Merino and 17 fellow teachers and family members who traveled to Santa Ana, Thursday began with the anticipation of a day at Disneyland. But after the tragedy, the group made plans to return to Mexico and transport Krishna’s body to her hometown for burial.

Julio Murillo, who traveled with his wife as part of the tour group, said it would cost more than $800 to transport Krishna’s body and take care of other funeral arrangements. He said he was disappointed with the response of the Mexican Consulate, which he said offered $70 to help defray costs. Officials at the consulate in Santa Ana were not available for comment.

Including Thursday’s death, Orange County has had 13 drownings this year, said Dr. Hildy Meyers, an epidemiologist with the County Health Care Agency who has a state grant to study drownings.

Some family members said they were upset that there was no lifeguard at the pool. “I thought that there is security when one comes to a developed country,” said Martinez de Merino. “I don’t know how it happened.”

The entrances to the gated pool area have signs warning that no lifeguard is on duty and that children under 14 should have adult supervision. Both signs, though, are in English, which tour group members said they do not speak or read.

A Days Inn executive who helps coordinate package tours from Mexico said that he and the Mexican travel agencies that book the trips are responsible for warning tourists about the unsupervised pool.

“I’m usually here to greet them when they get in, when they go to breakfast, when the tour bus shows up,” Alberto Lerma said.

But Lerma said he was not told in advance by Quezada Tours of Chihuahua, Mexico, that the teachers group would be arriving Thursday morning. When Lerma got to work about 10:30 a.m., he said, several travelers were already in their rooms, in a nearby restaurant or at the pool.

The 10 adults and three children at the pool did not see Krishna having trouble in the water, according to police and those who were there. After spotting the girl at the bottom of the pool, one of the teachers in the tour group, Pedro Balderano, jumped into the shallow end of the pool. But Balderano said he can’t swim. “I tried to grab her, but I couldn’t,” he recalled in Spanish a few hours later.

Balderano sprinted into the hotel lobby and cried for help. General manager Ric Williams, standing at the front counter, ran outside to the pool and dove in, scooping up the young girl and bringing her out of the water. He administered CPR until paramedics arrived a few minutes later, he said.

Fire Department engineer Patrick McHugh, who was one of the first firefighters to arrive, said Krishna’s face was bluish and she did not have a pulse when they transported her to the hospital.

Williams, sitting in the hotel lobby after the drowning, said, “I have two kids about the same age and that’s been running through my mind. . . . It’s been a hell of a day.”

“She had an ample future,” Krishna’s mother said softly. “In one moment everything can end.”