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#Post#: 46--------------------------------------------------
How did a vicar's daughter die in a squalid hostel?
By: Montraviatommygun Date: March 12, 2011, 7:46 am
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How did a vicar's daughter die in a squalid hostel?
By Paul Bracchi and Rebecca Camber
Last updated at 9:22 PM on 23rd May 2008
Rosi was the much-loved adopted child of the Rev Simon Boxall
and his wife. So why did she end up plunging from the window of
a squalid hostel?
The spot where they found Rosimeiri Boxall is now a sea of
flowers. Among the floral tributes is a card which points an
accusing finger at those believed to be responsible for her
death. 'This tragic loss is on someone's conscience', it reads.
The people to whom these words are directed, it emerges, were
with Rosi during her final moments last Saturday when angry
voices were heard coming from her room in a house for the
homeless in South London.
One of the voices belonged to a young man. 'Don't touch her,
leave her alone,' he shouted. His plea, it seems, went unheeded.
Moments later, there was a 'scream' followed by a 'dull thud'. A
'dull thud' is the sound a body makes when it falls and hits the
pavement from 50ft ... or from the third floor of a converted
Georgian mansion in Coleraine Road, Greenwich.
'Paramedics must have been there for 20 minutes pumping her
heart in the street,' said a witness. Rosi died in the ambulance
on the way to hospital sometime after 6.30pm. She was just 19.
Neighbours - and, initially, even the police - must have
thought Rosi came from the same wretched background as many of
the other residents who pass through this halfway house, which
is made up of eight bedsits providing temporary accommodation
for homeless people.
A photograph of Rosi in her best dress and tiara back at her
parent's home, however, tells a very different tale. She was, in
fact, a much-loved vicar's daughter.
Detectives believe she may have been subjected to a 'happy
slapping' attack - where the victim's ordeal is filmed on a
mobile phone - shortly before she climbed on to a window ledge
in a bid to escape, but slipped and plunged to the ground.
How someone like Rosi ended up here in a filthy hostel with
boarded-up windows, bare floorboards, rooms without lightbulbs,
peeling paper and bloodstained walls (police and firemen were
frequent visitors to Coleraine Road) is the disturbing subplot
to the tragedy.
Another is that two girls, aged just 17 and 13, have been
arrested and bailed over her death.
The arrests follow a report by the Youth Justice Board last week
which revealed a steep rise in the number of crimes committed by
so-called feral females.
The identity of the older girl is known to the Mail. On her Bebo
internet page, she writes: 'I do things I shouldn't do, I say
things I shouldn't say. But at the end of the day, they are
actions I choose to take and they come with their own
consequences.'
Whether one of those ' consequences' was the death of Rosimeiri
Boxall is now a matter for the police.
Until recently, this girl, whom we shall call Karen, lived with
her parents and two teenage sisters in a squalid tower block in
South London.
A relative said Karen had left home 'some time ago' following a
row with her mother. 'She doesn't know where she is,' she said.
In fact, Karen was living at the Coleraine Road shelter. Rosi
had been sharing her room.
Under different circumstances their paths would never have
crossed. If they hadn't, Rosi - who was born in an orphanage
in Brazil - might still be alive.
She was adopted when she was three by the Rev Simon Boxall, 51,
and his wife Rachel, 49, and was brought up in Brazil - where
Mr Boxall was a missionary - alongside the couple's four
natural sons, now all in their 20s.
Mr Boxall worked at the Christ Church in Botafogo, a wealthy
suburb of Rio de Janeiro, situated between Flamengo and the
beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema, while Mrs Boxall was a
teacher at the local British School.
The family left in 2004 when Mr Boxall became vicar of
Thamesmead in South London.
'They are a lovely family and very well liked and respected
round here,' said one parishioner.
The four boys adapted well to life back in Britain; one is now a
policeman in Southampton, another a music teacher, a third a
student at Exeter University, and the youngest a computer
technician.
Rosi, on the other hand, struggled academically and dropped out
of Negus School in Plumstead without any qualifications, before
leaving home when she turned 18 a year and a half ago.
Those are the brief facts about Rosi's short life and brutal
death. Behind them lies a heartbreaking family schism. This is
laid bare by her brother, Alex.
Writing on his internet blog shortly after Rosi moved out, the
26-year-old police officer revealed: 'My sister has left home
for good, causing the family a lot of hurt.
'My dad is upset as I think, beneath it all, he genuinely
believed that Rosi would decide to come home and would stop
acting the way she was. He believed that she would come round
and that, with a bit of love, she would accept their help and
start her life over.
'My mum is just incredibly angry at the way she has been
rejected.
'They may not have got it right all the time, but they have
always done their best. They have loved her and have tried to
teach her the best way to live.
'I met up with her the other week when I went to visit my
parents . . . I was upset by the blatant lies that just rolled
off her tongue.
'I was upset by the way she made herself out to be the victim
and the way she had made my parents out to be the enemy.
'I have discovered things about her that I didn't really want to
know. She is my sister and I will always love her despite
whatever she may do.'
Rosi, says an old classmate, was 'sweet and shy' as a
schoolgirl. By the time she left the vicarage in Thamesmead, she
had clearly become much more confident and rebellious.
So much so that her father, according to someone who knew Rosi,
had threatened to make 'her sign up for the Army to get her back
on the straight and narrow. . . which is why she finally left.'
This week, Alex Boxall did not elaborate on the painful 'things'
he had discovered about his sister.
But given the world in which she was living - where drugs, and
worse, were prevalent - we can only speculate. Apart from
anything else, Rosi, it emerges, had been drinking heavily
before she died.
She is believed to have led an itinerant lifestyle, moving from
one friend's house to another, over the past year. She arrived
at the Coleraine Road hostel about a week before the tragedy.
She was with a 13-year- old girl, known as Lou, who knew Karen.
Karen was already living in Coleraine Road, and agreed to allow
Rosi and Lou to stay in her room, with all three sharing a
double bed.
'Rosi and Lou were good friends, rather than Rosi and Karen,'
said someone who knew the trio.
'Karen is not the nicest person. She is very loud, mouthy and in
your face. She thinks she is tough, but if someone stood up to
her I think she might back down.'
Holly Dowse, 17, lived on the second floor of the halfway house.
On the day Rosi died, she said the three girls started drinking
with two teenage boys, playing 'spin the bottle'.
'Rosi and the girls had come to my party the night before and
they got pretty drunk. I woke up with a hangover and they were
making a lot of noise around midday. I went upstairs to tell
them to be quiet.
'The three girls were in the flat with two boys. I could see
they had bottles of Lambrini on the side and a bottle of
Amaretto, which I think they had taken from my flat the night
before.
'I couldn't be bothered to argue with them, so I just asked them
to be quiet. They were playing spin the bottle and silly
drinking games and listening to music.
'Karen was dancing around in a black corset while Lou was being
pretty loud and giggling with Rosi. They all seemed well on
their way to being drunk, even then.'
A few hours later the girls could be heard arguing loudly.
Miss Dowse added: 'It was all about Rosi's boyfriend. They were
bitching at each other. Apparently, Lou had been flirting with
him and Rosi didn't like it.
'It all seemed a bit childish but because they had been drinking
it might have seemed like a big deal at the time.'
Just hours later, however, Rosimeiri Boxall was lying
unconscious and close to death on the pavement beneath the room
where the argument broke out.
'There is a sink under the window and it looks like she climbed
on to the sink before getting out of the window,' said a police
source.
Was she trying to escape? Detectives are reviewing mobile phone
footage from Karen and Lou. Last Saturday, shortly after Rosi
fell to her death, her brother Alex received a call from his
parents. 'They phoned me as soon they found out,' he said.
'It was very emotional and I do not wish to go through it again.
I'm not sure even if it was my mother or father I spoke to. I
was in shock.
He added: 'Rosi had not been abandoned or disowned by any of us.
She decided when she turned 18 that she didn't want to live at
home any more. She was an adult and it was her choice.
'She regularly came home to have lunch on Sundays with my
parents. In fact, she phoned them a few days before she died.
'I last saw her myself in London at Easter when I went to visit
my parents. We sat around chatting and I think we went out for a
meal.
'I remember Rosi playing with my three children. She was always
very gentle and looked so relaxed with them.
'We are all deeply upset and shocked, and Rosi's death has left
us feeling very empty.'
Rosi's parents were too distraught to speak about the tragedy,
but in a family statement, they said: 'She was a loving, caring
person who brought frequently-remembered times of fun and
laughter to the family ... more than just a daughter and sister,
she was also a great friend who will always be missed.'
They had plucked Rosi from poverty as an orphaned toddler in
Brazil all those years ago to give her a better life. It would
be difficult to imagine a more cruel irony.
• Some names have been changed for legal reasons.
(HTM) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021574/How-did-vicars-daughter-die-squalid-hostel.html
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