A child has told an inquest she accidentally pushed Shukri Abdi into the deeper end of water shortly before she drowned.
In June of last year, 12-year-old Somalian refugee Shukri Abdi died after drowning in the River Irwell in Manchester in the company of classmates from her school.
Following her passing, the Greater Manchester police ruled out any suspicious circumstances surrounding the drowning and described it as merely a “tragic incident”.
However, it was later revealed in an inquest that the classmates involved in the incident had a history of using racist language like “coloured” and “half-caste” and were bullying Shukri at school. It also came to light in an inquest in February that one of the classmates – who cannot be named for legal reasons – confessed to threatening to kill Shukri before her death.
An inquest into Shukri’s death resumed yesterday at Rochdale’s coroner’s court yesterday (November 25) after being adjourned earlier this year.
The children connected with the case can be referred to only as Child One, Child Two, Child Three and Child Four due to their age.
Joanne Kearsley, the senior coroner for Manchester North, read out Child One’s witness statement. A video of a police interview with the child was played in court, and a written statement from her personal tutor was read out.
In the evidence, Child One said of Shukri: “She was holding my legs at the back. I pushed her, I accidentally pushed her to the deep end. I couldn’t swim like that, I pushed her.
“She thought she could swim but didn’t know how to swim. She got into the water next to me. She was grabbing my hand. Something happened, she went down in the water to get back up, she didn’t make it. We were calling to Shukri to get up. She didn’t get up. We were all crying and shouting. She’s like really small. We were panicking. We were like: no, this cannot happen.”
A statement from a paramedic with North West ambulance service, Gillian Fenton, who attended the scene and saw the children on the riverbank after a 999 call was made said: “No one appeared to be crying or in any state of distress.”
DI Andrew Naismith, of Greater Manchester police, told the court on Wednesday: “There was nothing either of a criminal nature or anything untoward that happened to Shukri when she entered the water.”
The inquest continues.