Teenage girl fell to her death as she hid sister’s phone in prank

Tragedy: teenager Danielle Maragh was killed after climbing through a fourth-floor skylight at her family home as she tried to hide her sister’s mobile phone
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A teenage girl slipped and plunged to her death while hiding her younger sister’s mobile phone on the roof for a practical joke that went “horribly wrong”, an inquest heard.

Danielle Maragh lost her footing and fell from the fourth floor of her family home after she climbed through a ceiling skylight to carry out the prank.

It was initially thought the “happy-go-lucky” teenager’s death was a suicide, but a new theory emerged when police discovered her 14-year-old sister Shauna’s iPhone on the roof six days after the tragic accident.

Her father, Charles Maragh, 48, told St Pancras coroner’s court his daughter was “happy in life” and had turned 17 just three days before she fell to her death, just before 9pm on April 9. He said she had been revising for her driving theory test in the attic bedroom she shared with her sister. “That day she was quite excited because she was sending away for a provisional licence,” he told the court.

He added: “She and a friend had fallen out and I was saying ‘you’ll get back together’, but she was saying ‘I don’t care’. About half an hour later I just heard some tumbling. Then my window smashed and I looked out and I saw her on the floor outside in front and I just ran down the stairs.”

"This was an innocent joke that just had the most awful result" 

Coroner’s verdict

The court heard Shauna had left her iPhone 7 on her pillow while she went downstairs to do the washing-up, and the sisters’ bedroom skylight could only be reached by a ladder. Her aunt, Deborah Maragh, described Danielle as a “normal, happy-go-lucky teenager” who had already begun planning her 18th birthday celebrations.

“There seemed to be nothing wrong with her; if she had a problem she couldn’t talk to her dad about, she could always come to me,” she said.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, coroner Mary Hassell said: “What I have heard is that, just in the way of teenagers, she and her sister used to play jokes on each other and hide their things, for example their phones.

Danielle Maragh's family home
Barney Davis

“And, very significantly, after Danielle’s death her sister’s phone was found on the roof. It seems to me all of the evidence points in the same direction, which is that she was just playing a prank on her sister that went horribly wrong. It’s such an innocent joke she was trying to play, and it just had the most awful consequences. I think it was the work of a moment but she slipped and fell to the ground below.”

She added: “When I saw the photograph of Danielle’s bedroom window my first thought was that she must have intended her death because it seems so unlikely that she could have fallen out of the window by accident.”

But she said she now had “no hesitation in saying that this was an accident”. Danielle suffered a severe head injury in the fall and was declared dead by paramedics 30 minutes later.

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