Girl hanged herself over family row

Rosemary Edwards, 15, walked more than six miles from her Hampshire home in the early hours of September 5 this year to a remote enclosure in the New Forest and hanged herself with orange bailing cord.

Southampton Coroner's Court heard that Rosemary had become very upset when her parents said she could not use the internet or a mobile phone because she lied to them over how she lost a Saturday job in a shop.

The Southampton coroner Keith Wiseman was told by Detective Sergeant Damon Kennard that Rosemary had taken a drink and some sweets from the shop and had been sacked but she told her parents David, 52, and Jennifer, 47, she had left.

When the truth came out and she was confronted, Rosemary locked herself in the bathroom at her home in Dibden Purlieu before having a "tense" meal with the family.

Mr Wiseman said the sanctions were "entirely normal family discipline procedures" and that Rosemary's behaviour was very much "out of character".

The hearing was told that Rosemary had changed in the weeks before her death as she was spending more time on the internet, getting up late for school and skipping breakfast.

In the hours after the argument she texted someone described as a "virtual friend" and said: "I cannot stay at home anymore. I can either run away or kill myself but I have no where to go."

The police said that when Rosemary was found to be missing, officers immediately considered her at risk and a large-scale search was launched. There were more than 200 sightings from across the UK. A couple out walking discovered her decomposed body hanging from a tree on September 23 and a post-mortem examination found she died from hanging.

Recording a verdict of suicide, Mr Wiseman said: "There was no formal indication of what she was going to do. She must have had so many opportunities to realise that what she was doing was wrong but she pressed on with an obvious determination to bring about this terrible end result."