PALMA
A seven-year-old English girl was in a critical condition in Son Dureta hospital in Palma yesterday after falling from the fifth floor of the hotel she and her family were staying at in Calas de Mallorca yesterday while a full scale search was on for her mother, Sara.
The Cooper family had come to Majorca for half term and had taken two adjacent rooms at the Hotel Samoa.
Little Gianna Cooper's two brothers and father slept in one room, she in the other with her mother.
However, tragedy struck yesterday when, just after 7.30am, a hotel employee found Gianna lying on the roof of an office some five floors below the rooms her family was staying in. She was conscious but suffering from serious injuries. Police and paramedics rushed to the scene.
She was taken to Manacor Hospital but her conditioning started to deteriorate rapidly and Gianna underwent immediate surgery before being moved to Son Dureta.
Last night she remained in a critical condition as police tried to piece together what happened.
Gianna fell from a height of ten metres and next to her on the roof of the office was a beach lilo.
Police are apparently working on two theories based on statements taken from guests and employees at the hotel as well as Gianna's father; one is that the 45-year-old mother ran immediately into her husband's room to report what had happened, the other is that the mother, suffering a severe anxiety attack, did not raise the alarm until ten minutes after the fall.
But, what has confused police even more and only served to complicate the investigation is that Sara went missing yesterday.
A copy of the 45-year-old's passport photograph was faxed to the security services at Majorca's airport and ports while police searched neighbouring hotels, but no traces of the woman were found. Yesterday afternoon, a National Police helicopter was combing the area around the resort, in particular the cliffs along the coast.
She can't have gone very far, but there's no sign of her, said a source close to the investigation.
According to police sources, Gianna's father told detectives investigating the case that his wife had been behaving strangely since they arrived in Majorca.