5 February 2025, 11:58

An elderly woman was stopped by police while pushing her dead daughter through a shopping centre in east London.

Grieving Joan Kathleen Turnell, then 77, had kept the body of her daughter Tracey in their flat in Leyton for over a year before she was discovered, an inquest heard.

Neighbours had been complaining of ‘horrendous smells’ and a fly infestation.

When housing association workers turned up to the property, Joan refused to let them in – so they followed her to the High Street on November 7, 2023.

Joan was pushing her dead daughter Tracey in a wheelchair wrapped in a red coat.

The workers said they noticed a ‘vile smell,’ and called police.

Officers stopped her a short time later and found her daughter’s ‘heavily decomposed body,’ according to the Romford Recorder.

At an inquest into Tracey Turnell’s death, held on Tuesday, January 28, Mr Irvine said Joan had “severe” mental health problems and had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

A statement from Joan to the coroner read: “I kept Tracey with me because I couldn’t bear to part with her. I loved her too much.”

Joan denied causing her daughter’s death and in a statement to the coroner she said: “I do not know what caused my daughter’s death.”

In her statement about the day Tracey died, Joan described how they had been watching a film together. When it ended, she attempted to speak to her daughter but received no response.

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She said she believed her daughter had died over a year earlier, around September of 2022.

A pathologist was unable to identify a cause of death. Joan was never prosecuted for preventing the burial of her daughter’s body.