Tests on death plunge girls

Danielle Waddington had just started as an apprentice hairdresser

Post-mortem examinations are being carried out on Tuesday on the bodies of two teenage girls who fell to their deaths from a stairwell window at an Essex tower block.

Danielle Waddington, 16, from Southend, and her 18-year-old friend Lisa Utton of Rochford fell 120 feet from the 11th floor of Cecil Court, Jones Close in Southend.

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

Essex Police said they believed the girls had to climb over a railing and on to a ledge before falling through the window.

Some 70 minutes earlier, the teenagers had walked out of the accident and emergency department in Southend Hospital about half a mile from the tower block.

The girls fell from the 11th floor of the tower block

Officers said they had been picked up by an ambulance near the seafront in the town, apparently in a drunken and distressed state.

But the hospital said they left the unit shortly after arriving, and without being seen by doctors.

A hospital spokeswoman said inquiries would take place to establish that correct procedures had been carried out.

Friends of Danielle Waddington, who had just started a job as an apprentice hairdresser, left flowers and poems at the scene of the tragedy.