Model’s 100ft death plunge at selfie hotspot
Tragedy fuelled by drugs, inquest told
A BRITISH model plunged 100ft to her death at a notorious ‘selfie hotspot’ in Australia after taking a cocktail of drink and drugs, an inquest heard.
Madalyn Davis, 21, who was on a dream backpacking trip, fell after climbing over a fence ‘to take great photos’ following an all-night party.
Her body was discovered in the sea at Diamond Bay, Sydney, on January 11.
Tests revealed Miss Davis had taken MDMA, ketamine and cocaine and had been drinking vodka before she died.
Coroner Gordon Clow said it was a ‘very great tragedy of someone trying to live their life to the full’.
Miss Davis, from Lincoln, was on a year-long trip to Thailand, Bali and Australia and was funding her travels with modelling work.
The inquest, at Nottingham Coroner’s Court, heard she had been at a house party, then went with seven friends to Dover Heights to watch the sun rise.
Police who spoke to witnesses said the group had crossed to ‘the wrong side of the barriers to take great photos’.
Miss Davis, who was also a talented make-up artist with thousands of followers on Instagram, walked on with three men before one shouted: ‘She’s gone. She has fallen. She’s gone.’
Emergency services were called at 6.32am and search parties found a white flip-flop on the cliff edge. Her body was found four hours later, 55ft under the sea, wedged in a rock shelf with multiple injuries.
The inquest heard the group were ‘all seriously affected by drugs and alcohol’. Mr Clow said the illegal substances would have ‘impaired her decision-making, balance and co-ordination’.
Recording a conclusion of death by misadventure, he said: ‘This is a great trauma and tragedy of a young person’s life cut short by alcohol and illicit drugs.
‘This was a death that took place at a local beauty spot. It is not the first death at that area and sadly it will not be the last.’
Six months before Miss Davis’s death, a 27 year-old woman fell and died at the same spot. A fence was erected but it is claimed tourists frequently climb over it to photograph themselves. Past visitors have left warnings about safety for tourists on Google reviews. Miss Davis’s grandfather Paul Davis, 76, told of the family’s devastation after her death.
He said: ‘She was intelligent, very stylish and had a magnetic personality. Everybody liked her. She had it all. It has broken our hearts.’
Her parents released a statement revealing that the family had been ‘hounded’ by internet trolls since her death.
It added: ‘Madalyn was an introverted extrovert. She struggled with a world that could be so unkind, and was a good person that always saw the best in people. Sadly, sometimes that was taken advantage of.’
They also told how Miss Davis ‘found fame inadvertently through the expression of her art which she shared via social media’. Her parents added: ‘She packed more into her short years than we could possibly have hoped for.’
‘She’s gone. She’s fallen’