Texas summer camp linked to 27 flood deaths fights to reopen amid outrage
Instead, the 40-year-old dad has spent the past nine months in a living nightmare, after nine-year-old Lila was among the 27 people killed in the catastrophic floods that tore through Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, last July.
Lila was one of 24 girl campers who were in the doomed Bubble Inn cabin, a low-lying bunkhouse that was swallowed up by floodwaters in the early hours of July 4, 2025, leaving no survivors. Two camp counselors and the camp director also died.
Now, Bonner and wife Caitlin, 37, are doing their best to carry on for their younger surviving children, despite their 'indescribable' grief at the loss of their first-born.
'This has been a nightmare. I wouldn''t wish this pain on anyone,' the Dallas-based private equity firm partner told the Daily Mail.
Today, the Bonners are outraged at the possibility of Camp Mystic partially reopening to a reported 850 campers at the end of next month if Texas state health officials renew its license.
'I cannot fathom inviting hundreds of children to play in or around an active crime scene where 27 girls died just a year before,' Bonner said.
Camp Mystic, which is owned by the family of Dick Eastland, the 70-year-old director who died as he tried to evacuate Bubble Inn.
They are battling to reopen its Cypress Lake location - a half mile uphill from its flood-hit Guadalupe River site - despite facing multiple investigations including a criminal probe by the Texas Rangers into alleged negligence by camp bosses.
State health officials are also investigating, as are Texas lawmakers from two house and senate committees, who paid a grim visit Monday to the site where the girls were swept to their deaths.
More than 20 families of the lost girls - poignantly dubbed Heaven''s 27 - are suing the Eastlands, accusing them of gross negligence.
'This tragedy, clear as day, it is complacency, the failure to act and the failure to plan,' said Bonner.
'That management team was directly responsible for those children, and they lost 27 lives.
'It''s unfathomable to me that they would be entrusted with more children.'
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