A TEENAGER was twice the legal drink drive limit when she jumped to her death from a motorway bridge, an inquest heard.
‘Bright and bubbly’ Wendy Maguire, 16, was sent to the headteacher’s office when staff reported smelling alcohol on her breath after she had downed shots of vodka.
But two hours after her parents were called in to deal with the teenager she had jumped to her death from the footbridge over the A12 in Leytonstone, between Gainsborough Road and Wallwood Road Wendy, of Ilford, stormed out as deputy head Paul Egan was on the phone to her parents asking them to pick her up.
Friends at Palmer Catholic Academy in Ilford said Wendy was crying when she came to their classroom before she left the school on January 13 this year.
A witness saw her on a bus heading for Leytonstone looking upset.
Fourteen-year-old schoolboy Tahir Hussain was crossing the bridge when Wendy told him she was going to kill herself.
“I told her to go home or go back to school. She was crying and kept saying I’m just staying on the bridge,” he said.
Witnesses then saw her leaning over the railings before jumping off.
A post-mortem revealed Wendy died of head injuries.
Recording a verdict of suicide, coroner Chinyere Inyama said: “My view is that Wendy, thinking she was going to be in trouble, in a short space of time thought things through and decided she was going to jump off the bridge.”
Wendy’s devastated family said she was ‘happy and contented’.
Wendy’s mum Leila, 49, added: “She was looking forward to going to university. This was not a girl who would take her own life.
“I don’t think there was enough evidence to come to this verdict.”
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