Yesterday, when I heard that three people had died off the South Coast of England, my first thought was fear.
Not politics. Not headlines. Not suspicion. Fear.
I thought of the sea.
I thought of Brighton.
I thought of young people who may not understand these beaches if they are not local to them — how the shoreline can feel safe, shallow, welcoming… until suddenly it drops beneath you. The sea here can deceive you in seconds. One moment laughter, the next moment panic.
I imagined three friends together at dawn or late evening, maybe happy, maybe carefree, maybe just living in that beautiful reckless way young people sometimes do. And then disaster striking so quickly that nobody could stop it.
What broke my heart even more was not only the tragedy itself, but what came afterwards. Before facts. Before names. Before families had even finished crying. The comments began. Cruel comments. Racist assumptions. People talking about “boat people” and saying human beings deserved to die.
But these were daughters.
Friends.
Young women whose handbags were found on the beach.
Families have now been notified. Families are grieving.
And I sit here disturbed not only by the sea but also by what is happening to people around us. Because when I look at the profiles making these comments, they do not look like monsters. They look ordinary. Like the person beside me in the supermarket. The person drinking coffee at the next table. The person I might smile at during my morning walk at dawn.
That is what unsettles me most.
There is a hardness growing around us. A cruelty that rushes to strip humanity away from the dead before anyone even knows who they are. And as a Black woman, as a woman who walks through this country quietly trying to live with grace and peace, I feel that tension more and more.
I feel myself becoming watchful. Protective. Alert.
Part of me wants to scream at the ugliness of it all.
Part of me feels the warrior inside me rising because silence feels dangerous too.
But underneath all of that anger is grief.
Simple grief.
Three young people lost their lives in the sea.
Three families received devastating news.
And somehow compassion should have been the easiest thing in the world to offer.
Erica
Update:
The deaths of three sisters whose bodies were recovered from the sea off Brighton Beach have left a family and community devastated, as police continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.
The women, named by Sussex Police as Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walter, 32, and Rebecca Walter, 31, were all from Uxbridge in north-west London. Emergency services were called to Brighton seafront at around 5.45am last Wednesday after reports that bodies had been discovered in the water near Madeira Drive.
In a deeply emotional statement released through police, the sisters’ father, Joseph, described the unimaginable pain of losing all three daughters at once. He said the tragedy had left “an emptiness that words cannot heal”.
“No words can truly describe the pain of losing three daughters in the prime of their lives,” he said. “Jane, Christina, and Becky were more than daughters to me; they were my joy, my strength, and the beautiful light that filled our family with happiness and love.”
He paid tribute to each of the women individually, remembering Jane’s strength and loving spirit, Christina’s kindness and compassion, and Becky’s warmth and joyful nature. He added that although their lives had been cut short, the memories and love they shared would remain forever.
Police say there is currently “no evidence to suggest third-party involvement or criminality”, though inquiries remain ongoing to establish exactly how the sisters came to be in the water.
Chief Superintendent Adam Hays said investigators were determined to “leave no stone unturned” in understanding the events leading up to the tragedy. Officers are appealing for anyone who may have seen the women in the Madeira Drive area between 10pm on Tuesday 12 May and 5.30am the following morning to come forward.
As investigations continue, authorities have urged the public to respect the privacy of the grieving family during what is clearly an unbearable loss.
