A French-Irish teenager with learning difficulties died by “misadventure” after disappearing in the Malaysian jungle on a family vacation and no one else was involved, a coroner ruled yesterday.
The mother of Nora Quoirin, watching proceedings online, bowed her head as the verdict was delivered, with the coroner also saying there was no sign that the 15-year-old was murdered or sexually assaulted.
The teenager’s body was discovered after a hunt through the rainforest following her disappearance from a resort outside Kuala Lumpur in 2019.
Photo: AFP
Police said that there was no foul play and an autopsy conducted in Malaysia found that she probably starved and died of internal bleeding after days in the jungle, but her parents thought she was abducted, saying the teenager would never have climbed out of the window of the chalet where they were staying in the dead of night, as authorities believed.
However, following an inquest in Malaysia, Coroner Maimoonah Aid ruled that she died by “misadventure.”
“After hearing all the relevant evidence, I rule that there was no one involved in the death of Nora Anne [Quoirin],” she told a court in the city of Seremban. “It is more probable than not that she died by misadventure.”
The teenager likely left the family accommodation “on her own and subsequently got lost,” she said, handing down her ruling online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The teenager’s body was found in a stream in the jungle near the resort after a 10-day hunt that included hundreds of rescuers, helicopters and sniffer dogs.
As well as saying that there was no evidence to support the theories of homicide or sexual assault, she decided against an “open verdict” — something the teenager’s family had pushed for. Instead, Maimoonah focused on the family likely being exhausted after a long journey from the UK and activities at the Dusun resort on the day of their arrival in August 2019.
During the inquest, the teenager’s parents said that they heard mysterious “muffled noises” coming from the accommodation the night of their daughter’s disappearance, fueling their belief she was snatched.
In their testimony, police said the teenager had wandered off alone, while defending their investigation, insisting that a thorough search was conducted, but the parents, who testified via videoconference, painted a different picture, strongly criticizing the authorities for the response to their daughter’s disappearance.
The teenager had holoprosencephaly, a condition where the brain fails to develop normally. She had limited verbal communication and could only write a few words.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS