Holidaymaker perished inside airing cupboard
A HOLIDAYMAKER died after becoming trapped naked in an airing cupboard for a “number of days”, an inquest heard.
Elizabeth Mary Isherwood, a 60-year-old retired police officer, had got up to go to the bathroom during the night while on a oneweek stay in a luxury complex in Gwynedd, Wales.
But a possible mix-up between doors led to the parttime care worker from Wolverhampton stepping into the airing cupboard.
The door closed behind her, and when part of the door knob fell off, she became trapped in a “very confined space” with no light, Dewi Pritchard Jones, the coroner, told the hearing in Caenarfon.
In attempting to escape from the cupboard, she broke off a piece of copper pipe and used it to try to break through the plasterboard, but the broken pipe sprayed water throughout the airing cupboard.
The cold water spraying over her naked body led to her dying from hypothermia, the inquest heard.
Mrs Isherwood had bought the property as a timeshare with her husband, but their marriage had broken down and they had recently sold it.
Mrs Isherwood would normally have stayed with friends, but was using the property alone because staff had given her vouchers for a final stay.
Her family said that other guests reported hearing banging at the Plas Talgarth holiday complex, in Gwynedd, Wales, for more than 24 hours, but had assumed that there was maintenance being done.
Mrs Isherwood had managed to make a hole in the wall using the copper piping, but a picture on the other side meant “she probably thought she couldn’t get out”, said Mr Pritchard Jones.
The coroner recorded a conclusion of misadventure, as he said it was “sheer bad luck that the knob disintegrated” while she was trapped in the cupboard.
Mrs Isherwood left West Midlands Police in 1991.