Appeal over balcony death thrown out
THE family of a woman who fell to her death in Benidorm have had a criminal investigation into her death rejected by a Spanish court.
Kirsty Maxwell died in April 2017 while on a hen party weekend. The 27-year-old, from Livingston, West Lothian, fell from the tenth floor of the Apartamentos Payma, off the balcony of a room occupied by five Britons.
A Spanish judge ruled last September there was ‘no evidence’ the room’s occupants, all men from Nottingham, were involved in the tragedy.
Mrs Maxwell’s parents, Brian and Denise Curry, had appealed the decision to shelve a criminal investigation into her death and clear the five British suspects.
They took the case to a higher regional court to overturn an earlier ruling by Benidorm judge Ana Isabel Garcia-Galbis. However their appeal was yesterday thrown out by a Spanish court.
Three Alicante-based judges said there was nothing to indicate the 27-year-old had not jumped to her death after an alcohol-fuelled hen night with friends in the Costa Blanca resort.
The judges said it was ‘logical and legitimate’ that Kirsty’s parents disagreed with the lower court ruling. But they added: ‘It can only be concluded that the evidence points to her death being accidental, without there being existing sufficient evidence of a crime being committed by any one of the men under investigation.’
Newly married Mrs Maxwell died after mistakenly walking into a tenth-floor room at the apartment complex next door to her friends’ room.
Retired CID detective David Swindle, who has been helping her family, said: ‘Kirsty and her loved ones appeared to have been let down by apparently irretrievable shortcomings in Spanish police, forensic and crime investigation procedures.’