Jury Consider Verdict in Corfu Deaths Inquest
A jury in the inquests into the deaths of two young children who died of carbon monoxide poisoning during a holiday on the Greek island of Corfu has been told by a coroner the only conclusion it can come to is unlawful killing.
A two-week long hearing in Wakefield has heard how Bobby and Christi Shepherd, aged six and seven, died at the Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel when they were overcome by fumes from a faulty boiler.
The children, from Horbury, near Wakefield, were on a half-term break with their father, Neil, and his partner, now wife, Ruth, when the tragedy happened in October 2006.
Summing-up the case to the jury today, West Yorkshire Coroner David Hinchliff said the only conclusion it can come to would be a conclusion of unlawful killing''.
The coroner sent the jury out to consider its conclusions with instructions on how to fill out a form detailing how and why the children died.
He said to the jury just before it retired: This has been a complex, difficult and sometimes harrowing exercise. But you have to make your determination based on the evidence that you've heard and not on any feelings of sympathy and empathy with the family.''
The jury heard how Christi and Bobby had felt ill the day before and, at bedtime, the adults were also not feeling well.
Mr and Mrs Shepherd went into the children's bedroom to help them but do not remember anything else until they woke in hospital.
The jury has heard that Bobby and Christi were poisoned by carbon monoxide from a faulty hot water boiler housed in an outbuilding.
There were a series of faults in the rusting boiler, including a failure to fit a flue, a water leak which meant it was over-working, a crucial safety device that had been short-circuited and holes left in the walls between the outbuilding and the bedroom when air conditioning pipes had been installed.
The coroner called this final error a bodged and botched'' job.
The Shepherds had booked the ÂŁ2,000 holiday with Thomas Cook and a series of former employees of the firm went into the witness box and exercised their legal right not to answer questions.
This included the chief executive of the holiday firm at the time of the tragedy, Manny Fontenla-Novoa.