Affidavit: owners monitored warnings but neglected to relocate before 27 died
Texas Rangers are pursuing a criminal investigation of Camp Mystic that could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges in the deaths of 25 campers and two teenage counselors in last year’s Guadalupe River flood, according to court documents reviewed by The Guardian.
In applications for search warrants executed last week, investigators sought to obtain the electronic communications of the camp’s owners, saying those communications could provide evidence of manslaughter, negligent homicide, child abandonment, or other crimes. No charges have been brought, and a representative of the camp did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
The search warrants come more than 14 months after the flooding killed at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch of the Guadalupe River.
Brant Johnston, with the Texas Rangers, wrote in an affidavit that Camp Mystic had inadequate emergency plans, failed to conduct emergency drills or training, and in some cabins did not have enough adult counselors. The camp’s owners neglected to take precautions by relocating children from low-lying cabins despite having monitored late-night flood warnings, Johnston wrote.
“Young campers cannot reasonably be expected to independently recognize a rapidly developing, life-threatening hazard or to organize and execute an evacuation absent direction from an adequate number of adult supervisors,” Johnston wrote in the warrant application.
He concluded: “Camp Mystic, LLC was aware of and consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death to the campers in their care.”
Twenty-five campers and two teenage counselors at the Christian all-girls sleepaway camp were killed as the raging Guadalupe River surged beyond its banks before dawn on July 4, 2025. Camp Mystic owner Richard Eastland also died in the flood.
For decades, Camp Mystic was a summer staple and an institution for generations of families, who dropped off their girls at the sleepaway camp to ride horses, canoe, fish and attend Bible studies. The camp did not reopen this year, and it has filed for bankruptcy reorganization.
Attorneys for some of the victims’ families welcomed the search warrants but said they should not have been necessary.
“For more than a year, families of the 27 angels killed at Camp Mystic have fought, begged, and pleaded with the Eastland family for accountability and answers,” Christina Yarnell and Brad Beckworth, attorneys for the family of victim Cile Steward, said in a written statement. “Instead, the Eastlands have held hostage the information and answers owed to parents who deserve, more than anyone, to know the details surrounding their daughters’ final moments.”
Steward’s body still has not been found.
Johnston wrote in the warrant that he made several visits to Camp Mystic and that he and other investigators have conducted interviews with witnesses, flood victims and people associated with the camp. Several people, including members of the Eastland family and other top camp officials, refused interviews, according to Johnston.
The Eastland family and other camp leaders have testified in courtrooms and in front of the state Legislature in the months since the flood, however, with camp director Edward Eastland offering a tearful apology.