3 Nigerian sisters found de@d in Brighton sea visited their late mother’s home days before, a UK coroner has ruled in a heartbreaking inquest.
A UK coroner has ruled that three Nigerian-British sisters — Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31 — took their own lives together after their bodies were recovered from the sea off Brighton on 13 May. The inquest heard they visited their late mother’s former home in Birmingham just two days earlier.
The story of the 3 Nigerian sisters who died in the sea off Brighton has finally been given an official explanation, and it is as painful as anyone feared.
Senior coroner Penelope Schofield, sitting at Woodvale coroner’s court in Brighton on Thursday, concluded that Jane Adetoro, Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters all died by suicide. All three lived together in a flat in Greenford, west London.
What makes this case even harder to process is the trip they made just days before. The inquest heard that on 11 May, the 3 Nigerian sisters booked a taxi and travelled all the way to Birmingham. The driver dropped them at Linton Walk at 11.36pm — an address that sits very close to Brookvale Park Lake.
That lake is where their mother, Janice Adetoro, drowned in 2010.
They were picked up again at 1.28am on 12 May and taken back home to London. DCI Mark Cullimore of Sussex Police told the hearing there was no CCTV footage covering what the women actually did during those two hours in Birmingham.
3 Nigerian sisters
The following evening, the 3 Nigerian sisters boarded another pre-booked taxi, this time heading to Brighton. They arrived near the seafront at 10.21pm on 12 May. CCTV from the beach captured them alive for the last time at 2.42am on 13 May.
A RNLI lifeboat crew later recovered the bodies of Jane Adetoro and Christina Walters from the water. Rebecca Walters was found along the shoreline on Brighton beach. 3 Nigerian sisters
“In hours of darkness, they entered the sea at Brighton, they could not swim and sea conditions were adverse,” the coroner told the court.
Postmortem examinations confirmed all three died from drowning. There were no drugs or alcohol in their systems, and nothing to suggest anyone had harmed them. 3 Nigerian sisters
Schofield described the 3 Nigerian sisters as women who kept almost entirely to themselves. “These three sisters lived very secluded lives, they were incredibly private. We don’t know why they took this course of action or indeed why they chose to do it in Brighton. It is not for the court to speculate and sadly these reasons may never be known,” she said.
The hearing was told Christina Walters had been battling anxiety and depression since their mother’s death 14 years earlier. Rebecca had no recorded history of mental health difficulties, while Jane Adetoro was not even registered with a GP.
Their father, Joseph Jacobson, joined the hearing by video link. In a written statement read to the court, he laid bare a grief that is almost impossible to imagine. 3 Nigerian sisters
“There are no words that can adequately express the pain of losing a child. To lose all three of my precious daughters, Jane, Christina and Rebecca, is a heartbreak beyond anything I could ever have imagined,” he said.
He admitted he still cannot make sense of how their lives ended so suddenly. “You were my daughters, you will always be my daughters and I will love you for the rest of my life. May your beautiful souls rest in perfect peace.”
This whole thing just leaves you heavy. The Nigerian community in the UK is still trying to process how three sisters from the same house could be gone just like that. It brings up that hard truth we keep ignoring—that people can be dying inside while everybody outside thinks they just like keeping to themselves.
If you are carrying a burden that feels too heavy right now, please, do not do it alone.
In Nigeria: Call the Suicide Prevention Initiative on 0806 210 6493 or MANI on 0809 111 6264.
In the UK: Call Samaritans free on 116 123.
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