The foster mum of one of the girls who fell to her death from a tower block has blamed teenage binge drinking for the tragedy.
Dawn Attridge cared for 18-year-old Lisa Utton for three and a half years and described her as a "lovely, bubbly girl" who had no reason for jumping 120ft off the block in Cecil Court, Southend, with 16-year-old Danielle Waddington.
The foster mum said: "The problem looks like alcohol - and that really needs to be pressed home to all young people who drink on the seafront. These kids are not just drinking little cans of beer - they are drinking bottles of vodka, neat.
"We will never really know what happened on Saturday night - but they both had problem backgrounds, they had a lot of drink, and they just blew things out of all proportion - and two lovely people have died.
"How could anyone who knew what they were doing do that to themselves? How can anyone stand at the top of a building and just go?"
Post mortem examinations have been completed, and police say both girls died from multiple injuries.
Published Wednesday November 19, 2003
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