The parents of an 8-year-old Texas girl who vanished last summer when the Hill Country was inundated by flash flooding are suing the operators of Camp Mystic, the Christian summer camp where she had been staying when she was washed away.
Will Steward and CiCi Steward say the Eastland family, which has run the all-girls camp for decades, failed to protect Cecilia “Cile” Steward, who is “presumed to be deceased.”
“On June 29, 2025, Will and CiCi Steward dropped their eight-year-old daughter Cile off for her first time at sleepaway camp, an entire month at Camp Mystic, where Cile’s mother, aunt, grandmother, and countless cousins had attended as campers and counselors,” the lawsuit states. “Cile’s parents did not know that when they kissed Cile goodbye, it would be the last time they would ever hold her.”
The Austin couple are seeking in excess of $1 million in actual and punitive damages, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Travis County, Texas.
Twenty-seven children and camp counselors were among the 130 people who died after slow-moving thunderstorms in Kerr County caused the Guadalupe River to flood on July 4, 2025 and turned a national holiday into a Texas tragedy.
The victims of the flood included Richard “Dick” Eastland, the owner of Camp Mystic.
“We believe Dick was trying to save a few of the campers,” Lauren Garcia, a former Camp Mystic attendee, told reporters at the time. “I believe he passed while trying to save them from the flooding.”
But the Stewards contend in the lawsuit that Eastland, and his son, Edward Eastland, waited for more than an hour before they attempted to evacuate the girls from the cabins.
Also, despite being in a flood plain and having a well-documented history of flooding, the Eastland family had a bare bones emergency evacuation plan in place and they repeatedly ignored the National Weather Service flooding alerts, the lawsuit states.
When the rains came, the Eastlands started moving some of their assets to higher ground, according to the lawsuit.
“They moved the horses. They moved the canoes. They did not move the children,” the lawsuit states.
Even as water started seeping into the cabins scattered along the river bank, Edward Eastland insisted the campers stay put and climb to the top bunks, the lawsuit states.
Edward Eastland wrongly predicted that the flood waters would soon “recede,” the lawsuit states. And at one point he desperately tried to pray the rain away.
“Lord Jesus, please stop the rain,” he was heard saying, according to the lawsuit.
“But the water keeps coming,” the lawsuit states. “The girls’ trunks are floating as the girls huddle on two top bunks by the windows, terrified and desperate.”
The lawsuit names as defendants the camp and affiliated companies, Edward Eastland and three other members of the Eastland family, and William Neely Bonner III, who is president of Natural Fountain Properties, Inc., which owns the land occupied by Camp Mystic.
The Eastlands’ lawyer, Mikal Watts, said they are “devastated by the deaths of our campers and counselors, and we continue to pray for God to comfort and support their families in their unfathomable grief.”
But, Watts said, they “intend to demonstrate and prove that this sudden surge of floodwaters far exceeded any previous flood in the area by several magnitudes, that it was unexpected and unforeseeable, and that no adequate early warning flood systems existed in the area.”
“We disagree with the misinformation in the legal filings regarding the actions of Camp Mystic and Dick Eastland, who lost his life as well,” Watts said. “We will thoroughly respond to these accusations in due course.”
The Stewards’ lawsuit was filed after the families of 13 other campers and two counselors who died in the floods filed a lawsuit in November against Camp Mystic and its owners, alleging “gross negligence and reckless disregard for safety.”
In December, Camp Mystic announced plans to reopen this summer at their newer Cypress Lake location, which is, according to their website, “completely independent from the older Guadalupe River camp.”
“The Eastlands are tone deaf to the realities of what transpired at their camp,” the Steward’s lawsuit states.
The Stewards said in the lawsuit that Cile and two other campers managed to flee their cabin on an inflatable mattress. But Cile fell off the mattress and tried to swim “to the tree where the majority of the survivors were found.”
“She was so close to survival,” they said in the lawsuit. “She almost makes it.”
But “the current is too strong.”
“Cile is swept away,” the lawsuit states.
The grieving parents were unsparing in their criticism of the Eastland family.
“The Eastlands now blame God for what happened,” the lawsuit states. “They claim this tragedy occurred because of an unprecedented flood. The truth is that this flood was precedented.”
The Eastlands, the Stewards said in the lawsuit, ignored “the warnings provided by Camp Mystic’s history of flooding by claiming that the July 4th flood was a 1,000-year flood and the last time a flood like this one happened, Noah had to build an ark.”
“That’s not true either,” the lawsuit states. “But even if it were, both Noah and the Eastlands were warned a flood was coming. The only difference is, Noah prepared. The Eastlands did not.”
