AUSTIN, Texas – After nine hours of emotional testimony from parents affected by the Hill Country floods, one mother from San Antonio testified in front of Texas state lawmakers inside the state Capitol on Tuesday, criticizing Camp Mystic’s directors.
Around 7:20 p.m. Tuesday, San Antonio mother Malorie Lytal spoke in front of a July 4 flood committee, made up of Texas state lawmakers, on behalf of her daughter, Kellyanne Lytal, who died at Camp Mystic due to the floods.
The hearing began at 10 a.m. with an apology from Co-Director Edward Eastland to the multiple families directly affected by the tragic floods that killed 27 children and counselors.
His apology was followed by hard criticism from the committee, including Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), who suggested the Eastland family should remove themselves from the Camp Mystic organization.
“Y’all will not be an operator next session (or) next season if I can have anything to say with that,” Perry said.
>> Texas Senator suggests Camp Mystic reopen without Eastland family
Lytal has two daughters, and her oldest was Kellyanne. She was 8 years old when she died at Camp Mystic.
Texas Rangers notified Lytal that her body was found, but she claims she never received a call from the Eastland family regarding her missing child beforehand.
“Her beautiful life was stolen from us,” Lytal said.
Lytal and her family were Camp Mystic alumni. She first attended the camp in 1995 and stayed in the Twins One Cabin.
She dropped off her daughter, Kellyanne, at Camp Mystic on June 29, 2025, and specifically requested that her daughter stay in the same cabin she had stayed in 30 years earlier.
“I never knew signing that Mystic application was signing Kellyanne’s death certificate,” Lytal said as she started to tear up.
Lytal said she had multiple conversations with her daughter, Kellyanne, about protection and safety days before her first camp visit.
“She asked me specifically about rainy days and thunderstorms,” Lytal said. “I always reassured her that counselors would be trained to help her and that leadership would know what to do in any time of emergency. I believed that, I trusted that, and I was wrong.”
As tears poured out from Lytal’s eyes and surrounding families inside the state Capitol, she said Camp Mystic provided an unsafe environment that “knocked on wood with its safety standards and rolled the dice with our daughter’s life.”
Memories were spoken from Lytal’s perspective inside the cabins where she claimed three counselors cared for her.
A testimony on Monday claimed some cabins during the 2025 summer, where the floods took 27 lives, had two counselors, which was unheard of, according to Casey Garrett, who investigated Camp Mystic.
Lytal believed the counselors were inexperienced, but did not blame them during her testimony.
She aimed the blame towards Camp Mystic and the Eastland family.
“No logical-minded parent would have ever allowed their children to attend Camp Mystic if they knew all the red flags where leadership had cut corners to maximize profits,” Lytal said.
Lytal remembered the terrain of Mystic and said her daughter, Kellyanne, was a short walk away from higher ground towards the recreation hall, and a few steps from a staircase leading to the second floor.
“Kellyanne had places to go to survive, but she was left in a death trap,” Lytal said.
Lytal made eye contact with the Eastland family, whom she said she’s known her entire life, and said, “I am heartbroken that you have not only destroyed our lives, but that you’ve destroyed your own. As well as taken away every beautiful memory and magic of Mystic that many have held so dear in their hearts.”
“The deaths of our daughters have been nothing more but an inconvenience to Mystics’ rush to reopen camp,” Lytal said.
She hopes her daughter, Kellyanne, is smiling and dancing in Heaven along with the 27 other campers and counselors who died during the Hill Country floods.
“I will wrap my arms around you, and I will never let go,” Lytal said as state representatives and senators wiped away tears at the end of her testimony.
How we got here
Roaring floods through the Guadalupe River killed more than 100 people in Kerr County on July 4, 2025.
Twenty-seven of them were on Camp Mystic grounds.
The all-girls, Christian camp has been under harsh scrutiny for a lack of emergency procedures and not properly training college-aged counselors who were in charge of multiple young girls, some as young as 8.
Monday’s hearing on April 27 laid out the flaws Camp Mystic overlooked and how the camp could have prevented the tragedy.
Camp Mystic is currently seeking approval to reopen this summer.
However, last week the Texas Department of State Health Services gave the camp 45 days to correct its emergency plans after finding deficiencies across 22 separate categories in its current safety procedures.
Tuesday was the last day of the scheduled hearing, according to the Texas House of Representatives website.
Camp Mystic coverage from this week on KSAT: