Girls fell backwards off bridge to their deaths, inquiry is told

The two teenagers, both residents at a secure care unit, were seen arm in arm before falling in a ‘very controlled’ manner

Two girls who plunged from a bridge fell backwards arm in arm like “divers going off a boat”, a fatal accident inquiry has heard.

Gary Cronin, a Ministry of Defence firefighter, was driving across Erskine Bridge in Scotland when he saw the pair sitting on the outer railing with their backs to the water.

He told the inquiry at Paisley sheriff court that they fell backwards in a “very controlled” manner.

Cronin stopped his car and ran to look over the edge of the bridge but could see nothing as it was “pitch black”, the inquiry heard.

Niamh Lafferty, 15, and Georgia Rowe, 14, died after they fell more than 100ft from the Erskine bridge on the evening of 4 October 2009.

Cronin was driving from the Renfrewshire side of the river to the Dunbartonshire side when he saw the two fall.

He told the inquiry: “I was travelling across the bridge and I said to my girlfriend, ‘Look at the beautiful view,’ and she looked to the right.

“I looked forward and I saw two figures arm in arm and instantly they just fell backwards in a very controlled manner.

“It reminded me of two divers going off a boat.”

Asked whether there was anything to suggest it was not a deliberate action, he replied: “Not at all. It looked to me like two people in a very controlled manner decided to go off the bridge.

“I said to my other half, ‘Oh my god, two girls have just gone off the bridge.'”

When he stopped the car, his partner, a nurse, rang emergency services and police took a statement from him later that evening.

Cronin said he could tell the pair were young girls, under the age of 20, and that one of them was wearing a white top.

They were sitting almost in the centre of the bridge on the western side, he said.

The two girls were both residents at a nearby secure unit, the Good Shepherd Centre in Bishopton, Renfrewshire.

Lafferty, from Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, was placed at the unit in June 2008 after being taken into care.

Adah Lambie, 55, who at the time was a social work team leader at Argyll and Bute council, told the inquiry: “She was a troubled young person who had a very anxious attachment to her father and who struggled with her relationship with her mother.

“She wanted her [mother’s] attention a lot of the time and she could not understand why she could not monopolise that.”

Lambie said that during autumn 2008 the department had difficulties with Lafferty’s father, Paul Lafferty, who she said could be unreliable and difficult to contact, and was said to have addiction problems.

However, she said, the ultimate goal of the council department was to see Lafferty move back in with her father because that was what the girl had wanted.

Lambie said: “It would not have been our preferred option but because we had a young person who had a very strong feeling she wanted to be with her father, we had to take that into consideration. To go against that or to dismiss that without looking at ways it could have been possible would not have been correct.”

She also said her department worried about Lafferty’s boyfriend, Jonny McKernan, who died of a drugs overdose in February 2009.

McKernan was “dangerous”, according to Lambie, who added that Paul Lafferty did not seem to “appreciate the risk” to his daughter.

“We told him that Jonny was a dangerous young man who had violent tendencies, was unstable, was using drugs and he would not welcome him having a relationship with his daughter. But this was not the case.”

She said Paul Lafferty spoke favourably of McKernan and seemed to see something of himself as a young man in the boy.

The inquiry before Sheriff Ruth Anderson continues.