A British tourist has died after a drunk stranger fell on top of her as she walked down the street in Alicante, Spain. Retired nurse Barbara Cahill was on holiday in the Costa Blanca city in October 2023 when the incident happened.
As she walked through the streets in a tourist area on October 14 “a very drunken man” suddenly fell on top of her. Barbara, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, was taken to a hospital in the city with a broken leg. The 83-year-old underwent surgery but following a delay she suffered complications and sadly passed away on October 20.
Authorities in Spain recorded the death as cardiac electrical activities without a pulse and intraoperative complication with a right tibial plateau fracture listed as a secondary factor, Mirror affiliate LancsLive reports. Following an inquest at Preston’s Coroner’s Court, Assistant Coroner Richard Taylor returned a narrative conclusion and said: “Barbara Cahill died in Alicante hospital on the 20th of October 2023.
“Having arrived in Spain on holiday on October 14 2023 she suffered a lower leg injury when an unknown person fell onto her in the street. Delayed surgery was undertaken from which she did not recover.”
Tragically, there are numerous cases of Brits dying following incidents abroad. Last month, a British man died while trekking with a friend in the Dhauladhar mountains in India.
The man, named locally as Thomas Harry Howard, 27, had been walking in the Himachal Pradesh mountains, near the Himalayas when he reportedly fell to his death. According to local reports, he slipped while descending from Triund, a small town 2,800m high which is popular with trekkers.
In December, a British tourist died in Thailand following a severe reaction to eating magic mushrooms. The 25-year-old is alleged to have bought the hallucinogenic drug on December 20 from a shop in Chiang Mai, a city popular with tourists in the north of the country.
Another British tourist died in an accident after her jet ski smashed into a rock while she was on holiday in the Bahamas. Investigators say that the 73-year-old woman, whose identity has not been released so far, is thought to have “lost control” of the watercraft before it then “collided with a rock”.
The Royal Bahamas Police Force confirmed the tragic incident happened on Saturday at Half Moon Cay, a private island known for its “white-sand beaches, a turquoise lagoon and untouched nature”. Despite efforts to save her from medical staff, she was sadly pronounced dead at the scene.
An investigation is now under way by Bahamian authorities. It was found that the victim was a passenger on the Holland America cruise liner Nieuw Amsterdam and was a dual British-Czechia national.
The cruise line contacted the woman’s family and said it is doing everything possible to support them during the difficult period. The ship was docked at the island – an exclusive destination for Carnival and Holland America passengers – on the seventh day of its two-week itinerary around the eastern and western Caribbean islands.
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