New details about the tragic death of a 12-year-old scuba student in August have come out this week, including a disturbing video showing the owner of the dive shop her instructor worked for apparently admitting this may not have been the first death the shop was allegedly involved in.
Last August, 12-year-old Dylan Harrison was participating in a training course at the Scuba Ranch in Terrell, Texas administered by a dive instructor working for the Scuba Toys dive shop.
During the session, the students were on a platform at a depth of 16 feet/4.9 meters, according to People Magazine:
“Following a miscommunication, the instructor brought the students back up before letting them down on the platform again. However, when the students reached the platform the second time, Dylan had vanished.”
A separate dive team later found her body at a depth of 42 feet/12.8 meters.
On October 17th, the Scuba Ranch issued a statement regarding the girl’s death:
“The Scuba Ranch exists to provide a safe and accessible freshwater environment for qualified Dive Instructors to conduct their training. The Scuba Ranch does not employ Dive Instructors, and does not provide, direct, or supervise instruction received. All Dive Instructors are independent of The Scuba Ranch and not affiliated with us other than as a customer. We do require that all instructors using our facilities follow recognized scuba safety standards outlined by their credentialing agency, as well as professional judgement, to train students safely.
“Immediately after this event occurred, out of an abundance of caution, we permanently suspended the instructor from teaching at our facility. The dive shop involved was also suspended from training pending the results of this investigation. This step was taken solely to ensure that safety remains the top priority for divers while at The Scuba Ranch.”
This tragic story doesn’t end there.
In a recently surfaced video of a standards meeting held in 2017, Joe Johnson, owner of the Scuba Toys dive shop, says in response to an instructor’s comment about not taking lawsuits lightly:
“All I know is we’ve killed, what, four people, five people and we’ve never even done a deposition. Our insurance company just settles. John Witherspoon said we can kill two people a year, we fine.”
Johnson’s 2017 reply led to that instructor quitting the dive shop and sending the video to a local official at the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI).
According to a local Fox News affiliate, that official, John Banks, a former NAUI regional director, forwarded the video on to the organization’s then-head of training and standards and subsequently the then-CEO of NAUI.
Banks told Fox:
“NAUI said it’s not actionable, and so it died at that point.”
UPDATE: On Monday, October 27, NAUI provided the following statement:
“We are deeply saddened by the dive training incident that happened on August 16th, 2025. Both the dive instructor and dive master present during the incident are NAUI (National Association of Underwater Instructors) sanctioned leaders. As with all of our sanctioned and certified instructors, safety has been and always will be our top priority. Our team will work closely with the appropriate authorities if needed. At this time, we are unable to comment further on this pending investigation.”
The Texas Rangers are working with local law enforcement authorities in investigating the case.
View the full video below.
