Erskine Bridge death pair ‘leaned and fell’

A man who saw a 14-year-old girl fall to her death with a friend from a bridge has described the pair’s final moments.

James O’Kane told a fatal accident inquiry he saw two figures wrap their arms around each other before leaning back and falling into the water below the Erskine Bridge on October 4 2009.

Georgia Rowe, 14, and Niamh Lafferty, 15, died after plunging more than 100ft from the bridge. Both girls were residents at the nearby Good Shepherd Centre in Renfrewshire.

Mr O’Kane told the inquiry at Paisley Sheriff Court that he was driving over the bridge when he saw two figures towards the centre of it.

He said: “They were sitting on the railings facing the traffic. They just leaned back off the bridge towards the water. They just put their arms around each other and leaned back and fell.”

He stopped his car and rushed to the barrier while his passenger called the police. He said: “I looked over the barrier but there was just nothing there.”

The families of Georgia and Niamh wiped tears from their eyes as they listened to the evidence at the inquiry, before Sheriff Ruth Anderson.

The inquiry was told that concerns had been raised by social services about Georgia some five years before she died.

A letter was written by East Ayrshire Children and Families unit to CAMHS – the Children and Adult’s Mental Health Service – on August 3, 2004. The letter, read to the inquiry, warned she “says she is going to kill herself”.

It said Georgia was both “bullying and being bullied” at school, and was having problems with her foster mother and aunt, Tanya Oliver. The inquiry has previously heard that eventually, in June 2008, Georgia was taken into care and moved to Hull. The inquiry continues.