Alamy
A teenage girl jumped to her death from a bridge because she feared she would be in trouble for downing shots of vodka with friends at school, a coroner said.
Wendy Maguire, 16, from Ilford, fell from a footbridge over the A12 in Leytonstone after being able to leave school despite showing signs of being drunk.
Walthamstow coroner Chinyere Inyama recorded a verdict of suicide, saying that no one was seen near Wendy before she fell and there was no evidence that she had stumbled.
"Wendy was not the kind of person who would act on impulse, she was a person who thought things through," he said.
"My view is that Wendy, thinking she was going to be in trouble in a short space of time, thought things through and decided she was going to jump off the bridge.
"This a girl who was not someone who was generally low in mood or spirit. She was a bubbly personality."
However, Wendy's mother Leila, 49, questioned the verdict, saying her daughter was a bright and popular girl.
"She dreamed of becoming an accountant and was looking forward to going to university. This was not a girl who would take her own life. I don't think there was enough evidence to come to this verdict," she told her local paper.
The inquest at Walthamstow coroner's court heard that the popular pupil drank vodka with her friends before class on January 13 this year.
Staff at the Palmer Catholic Academy in Ilford called her parents after smelling alcohol on her breath and removed her from a drama exam, but Wendy slipped away and got on a bus.
Paul Egan, the deputy head teacher, told the inquest that Wendy was in his secretary's office when he called her parents, but that she slipped out when his secretary had turned her back.
Standing on the bridge five miles from the school, she told a teenager that she was going to kill herself and was described as looking 'troubled' just before she fell.
Wendy's father Niall Maguire told the inquest that she was 'bright and happy', 'very content at home' and not the type to kill herself.He said: "I believe that she talked to my youngest daughter the night before and there was nothing untoward. She went to school as normal, maybe a little earlier than she would do normally, but other than that she was fine.
"We talked about what she would do in years to come, so I didn't expect it at all. She talked about where she wanted to go and where she wanted to take sixth form."
Wendy, who was born in Guyana and was predicted to achieve A and B grades at her GCSEs, began drinking on the morning before class.
She was later thrown out of a drama exam and was described as 'hyper' before arriving at a friend's classroom in tears.
The court heard that Wendy and her friends had decided the night before that they were going to drink before class, but that they had never done it before.
Her friend Lois Blasse, who also drank the vodka, told the inquest that after Wendy tried to contact her during a physics exam, she sent her a text message asking where she was. Wendy replied that was she was on a bus. Lois sent her another message but received no reply. Wendy's body was found that day.
A toxicology exam confirmed that her alcohol level was nearly 50 per cent over the drink-drive limit.