In the lawsuit, Cile Steward’s parents allege that failures by camp leaders led to the death of their daughter.

AUSTIN, Texas — The family of Cile Steward, the final missing camper from Camp Mystic, has filed a lawsuit against the camp.

The eight-year-old from Austin was among 27 campers and counselors killed when floodwaters from the Guadalupe River swept through the camp in the early morning hours of July 4, 2025.

In the legal filing, which was filed on Wednesday in Travis County, attorneys for the Steward family said Cile is “presumed to be deceased. Her body has never been recovered and recovery efforts are ongoing. The family is suing the camp and several members of the Eastland family, whose “conduct, inaction and decisions,” the lawsuit argues led to 27 camper and counselors being “needlessly killed.”

“Cile was taken from us seven months ago, and while we recognize this lawsuit will not bring her back, we feel compelled to ensure the truth of Camp Mystic’s failures are exposed,” Will and CiCi Steward said in a statement. 

Brad Beckworth, an attorney representing the family, said that filing the lawsuit was not easy for the Stewards because attending the all-girls Christian camp was a family tradition for generations. They want parents and families considering sending their children to Camp Mystic in the future to know that they believe what happened wasn’t an accident.

The devastating July 4 weekend flooding killed at least 138 people, the majority of them in Kerr County, along the Guadalupe River. 

This is the fifth lawsuit filed against Camp Mystic. The lawsuit claims staff told the girls to “stay put” as the water rose more than 30 feet.

“Cile did not die because there was nowhere to go. She died because she was told not to go. She did not die because there wasn’t time. She died because time was wasted,” the lawsuit said. “Cile did not die because there was no time to save her. She died because the Eastland family did not have a plan and ran out of time.”

In more than 100 pages, the lawsuit alleges that the Eastland family, which owns the camp, has not taken accountability for failing to evacuate the camp, and the tragedy was preventable and avoidable based on what the camp should have learned from its own history of flooding.

“Their promises of protection were hollow,” the lawsuit said. “Their invocations of faith masked a reckless disregard for the lives of the children entrusted to their care.”

Eastland served on the Upper Guadalupe River Authority Board, and just days before the deadly flooding in May of 2025, he voted to approve the hazard mitigation plan.

“It outlined a lot of issues that Kerr County and specifically the Guadalupe River had. That entire portion of the South Fork of the Guadalupe River was really exposed in many ways and exposed specifically Camp Mystics’s grounds,” Christina Yarnell, an attorney for Cile Steward’s family, said. “There weren’t early detection warning systems, and there weren’t sirens, but as a private property owner, Mr. Eastland should have known that it was his responsibility to harden his campus and prepare for his campers that were coming in July. He had from May to July, when those campers came to protect them, and they did very little in those months to harden their campus.”

It details warnings sent to Camp Mystic leaders by the National Weather Service and the Texas Department of Emergency Management ahead of the storm, but alleges they did not take them seriously enough or take the proper precautions or action.

At 10 p.m. and again at 2 a.m., the lawsuit alleges the Eastlands moved their canoes to higher ground, and also opened the stables and corral so their horses could move to higher ground, but did not move the campers. 

“They got the warning. We know that,” Beckworth said. “We know that motivated them to do something. Sadly, it was to protect property and not people.”

At 1:14 a.m., the NWS issues a Flash Flood Warning for Kerr County with a “Considerable” threat tag, the second-highest alert possible. It included an explicit warning: “LIFE THREATENING CONDITIONS EXIST. MOVE IMMEDIATELY TO HIGHER GROUND.” The lawsuit said that Camp Mystic’s longtime owner and director, Dick Eastland, received the warning on his phone but ignored it. Eastland later died in the rushing floodwaters.

“The Eastland did not do anything. For more than an hour, they did nothing,” Beckworth said. “They didn’t warn the girls. They didn’t go on their loudspeakers and tell them what was happening.”

At that time and even as late as 3 a.m., the lawsuit said that every safe evacuation route was open and available, and there were multiple safe locations where campers could have been moved to get them away from the floodwaters and the raging river.

“There was a loudspeaker tower 49ft from that door. All the Eastlands had to do at 1:14, when the National Weather Service told them to move to higher ground immediately, is say, hey, everybody, we’re under a flash flood warning. We need you to grab your stuff and move. This cabin goes to the rec hall. This cabin goes to the commissary. Whatever they wanted to do or needed to do,” Beckworth said. “All of the options were still available, but minute by minute, those options started to mirror. Even at 3 a.m., there were still options for Cile. Never told her to leave. Instead, they told her to stay, and that’s what killed her.”

At 3:00 a.m., the legal filing said Dick Eastland decided they had to evacuate some of the cabins closest to the river, but the camp had no evacuation plan. No one was trained on what to do in an evacuation, so they had to “improvise a plan in the midst of the chaos of a deadly flash flood.” 

“Texas law is very clear that you have to have a specific evacuation plan that’s required by a specific code. The Eastlands had no evacuation plan. None. Just stay in your cabins,” Beckworth said. “The law also requires that you train your campers, counselors and staff on that evacuation plan and within that to tell them where the safest spot is, so that when you have a chaotic moment like we got here and you say it’s time to move, that you know where to go, and then they have to document that they’ve done that training and give specific assignments to each staff member.”

The lawsuit said they evacuated, the five cabins closest to the river one at a time: Bug House, Look Inn, Hangout, Tumble Inn, and Jumble House.

In the emergency instructions posted in cabins, campers and counselors were told never to wander away from the cabin. Those in the flats, the area of the camp where Cile’s cabin, Twins II, was located, should “stay in their cabins unless told otherwise,” and they were told all cabins are constructed on high, safe locations.

While evacuating the other cabins, the lawsuit said Edward Eastland told the younger cabins to stay put until the water got “so high they couldn’t stay any longer.” An order attorney’s for the Steward family said was a “death sentence” that “defied every policy and guideline every federal and state agency provides for flood emergencies.,”

Around 3:30 a.m., the lawsuit said that Edward returned and told the counselors in Twins I and Twins II that they could not leave because the water was too high and would soon recede.

At that point, the water is rising inside the cabin, and the girls are forced to flee to the top bunks as they run out of room to breathe.

According to the lawsuit, while standing outside of the Twins II door, Edward begins audibly praying to “stop the rain,” as the water keeps pouring in and “the girls huddle on two top bunks by the windows, terrified and desperate.” Girls from the attached cabin, Twins I, began being swept out of the cabin, and “girls start fleeing, rather than drowning, through the doors and windows on the shared porch.”

Just after 4 am, the lawsuit said Edward was swept away from the Twins II doorway and downstream with two Twins I campers clinging to him, before he reached a tree about 200 yards downstream.

At this point, Cile and the other Twins II campers are still in their cabin. Eventually, the water rose so high it floated the bunks and tipped them, sending the girls into the churning water inside the cabin.  It got to a point where several counselors decided they and their campers needed to leave and evacuated, despite instructions to stay in their cabins.

“Once the water rises to the counselor’s shoulder height, one counselor decides to try to break out the side windows with a camper’s trunk,” the lawsuit said. “The water continues to rise above the top of the Twins II front door.”

The counselors put the campers on mattresses and sent them out of a window and downstream. 

The lawsuit said Cile was on a mattress with two or three other Twins II campers, but at one point, she fell off. She reached a tree where many survivors were found, but was unable to grab a branch. With the current as strong as it was and Cile unable to secure a grip on the tree, Cile was swept away in the floodwaters.

“She was very, very, very close to surviving,” Yarnell said. “But unfortunately, the Eastland waited too long, and that is what led to her death.”

Beckworth said there were four bodies of water converging at a central point and a hill shedding water, which created a vortex around Cile’s cabin and those nearby.

“There was no way for her to survive, even though she was a strong swimmer and had such a strong will to survive. It was really left up to chance whether she could grab a tree branch or not,” Beckworth said. 

As they kissed Cile goodbye and sent her off to camp, the lawsuit said the last thing Cile told her mother was “Mom, don’t worry, I’m going to be okay.” 

“Cile is not worried about her safety,” the lawsuit said. “She doesn’t know she needs to be. No child expects the adults in charge to abandon them.”

The lawsuit said the Eastlands refuse to take accountability for what happened, blaming God for it and saying the tragedy occurred because of an unprecedented flood. The legal filing alleges they insist “they did nothing wrong because nobody told them there would be a catastrophic flood at Camp Mystic’s specific address” and “nobody told them there was a life-threatening situation or instructed them to evacuate until after 3:30 a.m,” which attorneys for the Steward family said are both not true.

“The Eastlands dismiss the warnings embedded in Camp Mystic’s own history by insisting the July 4 flood was a 1,000-year event, that the last time a flood like this occurred, Noah had to build an ark,” the lawsuit said. “That is not true. But even if it were, both Noah and the Eastlands were warned that a flood was coming. The difference is that Noah prepared. The Eastlands did not.”

In a statement, Mikal Watts, an attorney for Camp Mystic, responded to the lawsuit, saying he and the camp “intend to demonstrate and prove that this sudden surge of floodwaters far exceeded any previous flood in the area.” It was “unexpected and unforeseeable,” and there were “no adequate early warning flood systems existed in the area.”

“We empathize with the families of the campers and counselors and all families in the Hill Country who lost loved ones in the horrific and unprecedented flood of July 4,” Watts said. “We 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.”

Watts also said he and camp owners disagree with what they called misinformation in the legal filings about “the actions of Camp Mystic and Dick Eastland,” and vowed to “thoroughly respond to these accusations in due course.”

“We remain proud of the legacy of Camp Mystic and its role in forging strong, young Christian women across Texas and will endeavor to continue that role in the future while focused entirely on implementing a litany of new procedures and new technologies to make Camp Mystic and the community around us safe for all who come in the future,” Watts said.

The camp plans to reopen later this year, partially. The camp is reopening the Camp Mystic Cypress Lake site, just around a hill from the Guadalupe River camp. 

“The Eastlands are actively taking deposits right now. It is a very aggressive solicitation here to former campers and to prospective ones,” Beckworth said. “They are leaning very hard on moms and dads, saying that you owe it to Camp Mystic to come back. That’s how we heal. We can’t miss that. We’re our own culture. We need to do this together.”

Camp officials also said they plan to build a memorial dedicated to the victims. That decision does not sit well with multiple families who have criticized it.

“If your kid went to school on Monday and you found out that a teacher had been driving a bus and killed 27 kids, you’d ask yourself, would you ever let your kids ride a bus driven by that teacher? If you had a coach who ran wind sprints in 105-degree heat, so that 27 football players died, would you allow your child to be coached by that person? Of course, the obvious answer to all that is no,” Beckworth said. “The way the Eastlands are pressuring these parents with a sense of nostalgia and duty to Camp Mystic and to the Eastland family is whitewashing what really happened. Cile didn’t make it to that tree because the Eastlands forced her to stay in her cabin until she had no other options.”

Attorneys for the Steward family said the history of flooding at Camp Mystic was well known and even frequently discussed at camp. One of Cile’s few possessions that survived the flood was a sheet of trivia questions about the camp’s history and traditions. One question asks, “What year was the Great Flood?” The answer is 1932. Back then, like this past summer, Camp Mystic cabins and structures were swept away. On July 2, 1932, the river at Hunt reached 36.60 feet, and on July 4, 2025, it reached 37.52 feet.

Every one of the cabins is in the 500-year flood plain. 

“This idea that it was a thousand-year flood is not true,” Beckworth said. “It was this year’s flood, and now we know that can happen, but they’ve known it could happen for over 100 years.”

Beckworth said he and the Steward family do not believe it is possible to have a camp at this site again, because there is no way to have cabins at the Guadalupe River location that are not going to be in the area where the flood occurred.

“You could put cabins on a high hill above the flooded area, but so what?” Beckworth said. “Are we going to let the same 4 or 5 people that failed these 27 girls and caused their death run a camp again? It really doesn’t matter if it was a flood, an intruder, or fire. They weren’t prepared for anything.”

The Steward family believes that, based on the Eastland family’s actions, the Eastland family should never again be in charge of caring for campers.

“Those folks have proven to us that when it comes to taking care of children, being prepared, having infrastructure, having plans in place,” Beckworth said. “They put profits over safety, and you don’t get a second chance when you kill 27 children.”

One thing the Steward family wanted to make clear, Beckworth and Yarnell said, is that they believe the counselors were heroes that night.

“The real heroes are the counselors who many times defied orders and took 16 cabin girls at a time up a steep terrain, some of them on their backs, wading through water,” Yarnell said. “They defied orders to try and survive and keep themselves alive, as well as all of the campers that were in their care.”

The Steward family is suing for $1 million is actual and punitive damages and is requesting a jury trial. They also want a judge to order the camp to preserve physical evidence and prohibit Camp Mystic from operating or reopening until the legal battle plays out.