Girls die after tower block fall

One girl died in Southend Hospital

Two teenage girls walked out of a hospital casualty department before falling to their deaths from the 11th floor of a block of flats in Essex.

Danielle Waddington, 16, of the Woodgrange Estate in Southend and her 18-year-old friend Lisa Utton, died after falling 120 feet from a stairwell window at Cecil Court, Jones Close, Southend.

They were found on a concrete area on Sunday at 0320 GMT.

Police said the girls had earlier been taken to Southend General Hospital after being found in an apparently drunken state near the seafront in the town.

But they left the accident and emergency unit before being seen by a doctor, and were found fatally injured shortly afterwards.

A police spokeswoman said residents in the flats had told police that the buzzers on their doors were rung in the early hours.

Post-mortems delayed

One person had also reported hearing the sound of the girls falling.

One girl was killed instantly, the other died from her injuries in Southend General Hospital.

Essex Police say they are not treating the incident as suspicious and are trying to establish the cause of the tragedy.

They believe the pair had to climb over a railing and on to a ledge to open the stairwell window before falling.

Post-mortem examinations were due to be carried out on the girls on Monday, but police said they had now been delayed and would take place on Tuesday.

Essex Police want to hear from anyone who may have seen the girls either near the flats or in Southend either late on Saturday or early on Sunday.