Brighton sisters' drowning tragedy: Why did three sisters take their own lives?

Three sisters who drowned in the sea off Brighton died by suicide, a coroner has ruled. Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31, were recovered from the water in the early hours of May 13 after travelling to the East Sussex coast.

An inquest at Woodvale Coroner’s Court in Brighton heard that three sisters, who lived together in Greenford, west London, had been leading “very secluded lives” after the death of their mother, Janice Adetoro, who drowned in Birmingham Lake in 2010.

Within less than 48 hours before their deaths, the women took a taxi to Birmingham and were dropped off near Brookvale Park Lake – an area close to where their mother died.

Then they returned to London in the early hours of May 12 before travelling on to Brighton that evening, arriving near the seafront at about 10:21 p.m.

In the CCTV footage, it can be clearly seen that they were walking along the road adjacent to the beach before they were last seen alive at 2:42 a.m. Postmortem reports revealed that the cause of death was drowning, with no signs of drug abuse, alcohol, or violence involved.

The court head, Christina, had suffered from anxiety and depression since her mother’s death, while police found 227 references to water and 179 to suicide on her laptop. No such issues were recorded for Rebecca, and Jane was not registered with a doctor.