Sun Valley Beach water park’s website thanks visitors for their attendance this year, and says the park will reopen in May 2011.
Parents of a teenager who drowned at the park two years ago unsuccessfully petitioned to have the facility closed, but are continuing with a wrongful death lawsuit against the Powder Springs facility.
In May 2008, Ifeanyi Odihe, 16, drowned in the deep end of the pool at Sun Valley Beach. He was at the park that day for a school-sponsored event with his father and sisters.
It's still unclear how Ifeanyi, a junior at South Cobb High School Academy of Research and Medical Sciences, drowned.
“The parents are certainly concerned about this happening to another family and they don’t want another family to experience what happened to then,” said Harold Spence, attorney for Ifeanyi’s parents, Simeon and Philo Odihe.
The lawsuit sits in Cobb County State Court after it was reassigned last month from Judge Kathryn Tanksley to Judge Irma Glover. Court records show Tanksley recused herself after Sun Valley’s attorney, Wade Copeland, noted that Tanksley’s husband, also an attorney, was representing another family suing Sun Valley in a similar case.
In September, Copeland asked that the case be decided without a full trial because he claimed there was no wrongdoing on Sun Valley’s part leading to Ifeanyi’s death, according to court records.
“We’re sorry for their loss, but that doesn’t mean that we’re responsible for it,” Copeland said. “It seems like he was a nice young man, but unfortunately it wasn’t our fault.”
The lawsuit seeks punitive damages of $250,000 in addition to recovery of funeral and burial expenses and other pain and suffering damages.
The family, through Spence, has maintained that the water in the 12- foot deep end of the pool when Ifeanyi drowned was unclear beyond five feet, making it unclear to lifeguards. They also believe the property owners, Wayne and Ann Powell, failed to maintain the pool.
Copeland’s court filing attributed any impaired visibility to a natural sandy bottom in the deep end of the pool, and not to any malfunctioning equipment.
Cobb and Douglas Public Health, which is responsible for conducting inspections of these types of facilities, approved the park to open this year.
The health department and the Powells agreed that signs would be posted notifying visitors of decreased water clarity during high-usage times. Sun Valley also implemented a water clarity monitoring system that could result in closing the pool if the water became too unclear, according to a statement from the health department.
“They clearly declined to close it,” Spence said. “It clearly is a health hazard. It was then and it remains so.”
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