A mum drowned after becoming trapped between rocks head-first while strangers battled to save her before the high tide, an inquest heard.
Saffrdon Cole-Nottage died on the seaside in Lowestoft, Suffolk, after slipping and having her head wedged between the large boulders.
The 32-year-old from Lowestoft, Suffolk, was walking with her daughter and their dog along the town’s seafront on February 2 last year when the tragedy struck.
Suffolk Coroner’s Court heard how strangers who rushed to help tried to pull the mother to safety, but were unable to release her as she lay facing downwards before the tide came in.
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Her family described Ms Cole-Nottage as a ‘truly one of a kind’ woman who had ‘the rare ability to light up any room.’
The inquest heard how the call to the emergency services was made at 7.52pm, but it allegedly took the fire service until 8.22pm to arrive at the scene, where the mum died.
The incident unfolded when Alex Singleton-Dent, who was walking along the promenade when he heard a girl screaming for help at around 8pm.
He said: ‘I looked over the railings when I saw a girl shouting for help for her mum.’
When he clambered down and shone his phone light on the rocks, he ‘could see two legs sticking out from them.’
Mr Singleton-Dent said: ‘She asked me to help and to pull her out.’
Along with another man, Ian Jones, who had also been on a walk, they tried to free her ‘but we just couldn’t.’
Mr Jones said in a statement it ‘felt like around 10 minutes we were pulling the lady’s legs but we just couldn’t pull her with enough force to free her.’
Mr Singleton-Dent said: ‘It felt like we were trying for ages and the emergency services didn’t arrive for hours but my adrenaline was going.
‘I do know the female became unresponsive and the tide was coming in.’
Meanwhile, the tide was ‘creeping up but I wasn’t really aware the situation was becoming dangerous,’ Ms Cole-Nottage’s daughter said in a statement summarised by counsel to the inquest, Bridget Dolan KC.
The girl said her mum was ‘screaming and asking for us to get her out,’ while the wait for the ambulance ‘felt like an eternity’ as time was running out.
She said: ‘I can’t help but think if the ambulance arrived a little sooner they might have been able to do something to get the stuck lady out.’
Eventually, she believes her mum’s head was submerged under water, she said.
Ms Cole-Nottage’s partner, Mike Wheeler, said she was familiar with walking along the concrete stretch beyond the promenade, and she had been fishing there with her dad when she was younger.
Mr Wheeler said in his summarised statement that on the day of her death, Ms Cole-Nottage had been to the Hatfield Hotel in Lowestoft ‘for a Sunday roast and a few drinks.’
He said his partner wasn’t slurring her words and was acting normally ‘although she had been drinking’ earlier in the day when she left for a walk with one of their children at about 7pm.
He said he grew worried when he heard a helicopter and the pair had been gone for about an hour.
Pathologist Raj Logasundarum said there was 271 milligrams of alcohol per 100ml of blood in Ms Cole-Nottage’s results.
He told the inquest this ‘would have significantly impaired her cognitive abilities.’
Ms Cole-Nottage’s cause of death was found to be drowning.
The inquest, set to last two weeks, continues.
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