Three Nigerian-British sisters travelled from London to the seaside city of Brighton, but within hours, all three were dead.
Their deaths, which left their family devastated and searching for answers, have now been examined at an inquest in the United Kingdom, where a coroner concluded that the sisters took their own lives.
The sisters were identified as Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31. They drowned off Brighton beach in the early hours of May 13.
According to a BBC report published on Thursday, Penelope Schofield, the senior coroner for West Sussex, Brighton and Hove, reached the conclusion following an inquest at Woodvale Coroner’s Court in Brighton.
The inquest heard that the sisters entered the sea under dangerous conditions. None of them could swim, and they encountered adverse conditions in the water.
However, despite the findings, the circumstances that led the three women to enter the sea remained unclear, with the coroner acknowledging that their precise motivations might never be fully understood.
Before the tragedy, the sisters lived together in Greenford, London. On May 11, they visited an area of Birmingham close to the location where their mother had drowned in 2010.
Two days before their deaths, they left their London residence and travelled to Brighton by taxi. Records presented during the proceedings showed that they arrived at 10:21 p.m. British Summer Time on May 12.
They were last seen alive at 2:42 a.m. on May 13. Their bodies were subsequently linked to the incident in which all three drowned off Brighton beach.
During the inquest, Schofield noted that the sisters had lived very private lives, making it difficult to establish what motivated their actions or why they chose to travel to Brighton.
The coroner cautioned against drawing conclusions unsupported by the available evidence, acknowledging that the reasons behind the tragedy might never be fully established.
Although the sisters had visited Birmingham near the place where their mother died years earlier, the inquest findings did not establish whether the visit had any connection to their subsequent actions.
For their family, the proceedings provided a formal conclusion regarding the deaths but offered little comfort in the face of such a devastating loss.
Their father, Joseph Jacobsen, attended the inquest remotely via video link on Thursday. An emotional statement was read on his behalf, reflecting on the years he had spent watching his daughters grow into adulthood.
He described them as intelligent and beautiful women, expressing the profound pain of losing all three children in the same tragedy.
The deaths have also left other relatives struggling to come to terms with the loss. In June, Jacobsen’s brother, Adesoji Adetoro, launched a GoFundMe appeal for the sisters, remembering them as young women whose lives held considerable promise.
In his message, he described the emptiness their deaths had created within the family and the difficulty of coming to terms with losing three loved ones at once.
The inquest has established the coroner’s conclusion, but the precise circumstances that led the sisters to enter the sea remain difficult to comprehend. Their journey from London to Brighton, preceded by a visit to Birmingham, forms part of the timeline examined during the proceedings, although no definitive link was established between their earlier movements and their deaths.
Ultimately, Schofield concluded that Jane Adetoro, Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters had taken their own lives.
Their deaths have left their father and extended family mourning an unimaginable loss, while questions about what led to the tragedy may remain unanswered.
Source: Punch Newspapers
