The family of three sisters who were found dead in the sea at Brighton have spoken of the heartbreaking loss, and how it echoes the loss of their mother 16 years ago.
Ajike Johnson, the sisters’ aunt, described seeing news reports last week stating that the bodies of three women had been recovered from the sea – unaware it was her own nieces.
“I just remember thinking, what has happened here? God bless them, and their poor families,” she told the Daily Mail.
Emergency services were called to the beach on 13 May after concerns were raised about a person spotted in the water near Madeira Drive at around 5.45am.
The bodies of Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walter, 32, and Rebecca Walter, 31, were later recovered from the sea.
The mother of the three girls, Janice Adetoro, died in 2010, after she walked into a lake in Birmingham. Her body was not recovered for several months because of the weather conditions at the time, the Mail reported.
Ms Johnson said her death “traumatised the girls” and they “never recovered”.
Their father, Joseph, has struggled to eat or sleep since receiving the news his daughters’ bodies had been found.
“They are his babies,” Ms Johnson said. “He is a softie anyway. My brother is a teddy bear, but when it comes to his girls… He has been catatonic.”
It is unclear why the women, who are from the Uxbridge area of northwest London, were in Brighton, or why they were in the water. The only connection the family can recall with the town was a family holiday.
Genevieve Barnaby-Adetoro, the girls’ stepmother, explained how the family heard about the tragedy.
“The police phoned first,” she said. “They asked Joseph if he had children, and when he said yes, they asked him their names. Then they came round to tell us in person. We’d been watching the news and had no idea it was our girls. We didn’t even know they were in Brighton. Then we had to go and identify the girls, one by one.”
Ms Barnaby-Adetoro told the Mail she was certain that her stepdaughters had not deliberately walked into their water as their mother had done.
“It is 16 years since they lost their mother. Time diminishes pain. It is still there, but there is no way you kill yourself after 16 years because your mother died. It doesn’t happen like that.”
An investigation is ongoing to understand how all three women came to be in the water, police said, adding that there was no evidence to suggest third-party involvement or criminality.
Police have reviewed hundreds of hours of CCTV footage and conducted inquiries at properties and businesses around the beach area to trace the women’s last movements.
Police are urging anyone who may have seen the three women around the Madeira Drive area between 10pm on Tuesday, 12 May, and 5.30am on Wednesday, 13 May to contact them online or via 101, quoting Operation Ledmore, serial 438 of 20/05.
