Texas Rangers are pursuing manslaughter and negligent homicide charges against Camp Mystic after 27 girls and counselors drowned in a flash flood — but the same state that lost 136 people along the Guadalupe River isn't investigating its own emergency response failures.
The affidavits paint a damning picture of the Christian girls' camp's conduct, and the grief of the families is real. But when the government's first move after a natural disaster is criminal prosecution of a private institution while its own agencies walk free, Americans should pay attention.
Investigator Brant Johnston filed 14 search warrants seeking Apple data from the Eastland family, who own and operate the Hill Country camp, as well as a night watchman and others, according to affidavits obtained by the San Antonio Express-News. Johnston accused Camp Mystic LLC of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, injury to a child, abandoning or endangering a child, and deadly conduct against both deceased and surviving campers.
The core allegation: camp leadership monitored flood warnings through the night but treated rising waters as a "manageable logistical operation long after the situation had progressed into a life-or-death water rescue operation," Johnston wrote. The camp had no written evacuation plan, conducted no emergency drills, and staffed some cabins with too few adult counselors, according to the New York Post. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning nearly two hours before the crisis hit around 3 a.m. on July 4, 2025.
Perhaps the most damning detail: Mary Liz Eastland, the camp's chief health officer, evacuated her own children from her home on the property but did not call 911, the Express-News reported. Tweety Eastland, the camp's co-owner, also fled without calling emergency services.
Camp owner Richard Eastland died trying to drive to the low-lying cabins to help. His body was found later.
Attorneys for the victims' families say the Eastlands have stonewalled them. "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 statement. Steward's body has still not been found.
Some Eastland family members refused interviews with the Rangers, Johnston wrote, though Edward Eastland offered a tearful apology before the state Legislature.
Here is what neither outlet addresses: 109 other people died along that same stretch of river. The total death toll was 136. Where were the county emergency alerts? Why did the state's own warning systems fail to trigger evacuations across miles of the Guadalupe? The Rangers have shown no interest in investigating whether government agencies were criminally negligent in a disaster that claimed four times as many lives as the camp tragedy.
Camp Mystic has filed for bankruptcy reorganization and did not reopen this year. The Eastland family will face the full weight of the state's criminal apparatus. The bureaucrats who run Texas emergency management will face nothing.
The families who lost children deserve accountability. So do the families of the other 109 dead — and so does every American who wonders why the state's instinct after catastrophe is always to prosecute the private citizen, never itself.
