An 11-year-old girl died in what a coroner described as a desperately unlikely accident after a sharp branch hidden beneath the mud pierced her chest while she was playing with friends in England.
Lilly Angel Rodgers, from Newton Abbot in Devon, was enjoying a summer day at Wacker Quay near Torpoint, Cornwall, on Aug. 16, 2025, when the tragedy unfolded.
An inquest heard that Lilly had spent the previous night at a friend’s home before heading to the mudflats the next day with two other children and supervising adults.
While the adults prepared a barbecue nearby, the children were playing on the muddy bank within sight of the group.
They had reportedly been sliding around, pretending to be starfish and crawling “commando-style” through the mud when Lilly slid headfirst down the bank.
That is when a sharp branch or root concealed beneath the mud pierced through her ribcage.
Witnesses said Lilly suddenly stood up, grabbed at her chest and gasped before collapsing.
The hidden object had penetrated deeply enough to sever one of her pulmonary arteries, causing catastrophic internal bleeding.
Adults rushed through the mud to reach her while emergency crews were called.
Because Lilly was more than 160 feet from shore, rescuers had to airlift her from the mudflats before CPR could be properly carried out. She was later taken to a hospital in Plymouth, where she was pronounced dead.
A postmortem examination found a wound nearly three inches deep in her upper chest.
Consultant pathologist Dr. James Garvican determined Lilly died from penetrating chest trauma and told the inquest the location of the injury was devastatingly unlucky.
He said that if the branch had entered only about half an inch to either side, the outcome could have been dramatically different. Instead, the injury she suffered was considered unsurvivable.
Senior coroner Andrew Cox ruled Lilly’s death accidental and said there was nothing suspicious about what happened.
He described the circumstances as an extraordinarily unfortunate sequence of events, explaining that the branch had been hidden beneath the mud and could not easily have been seen.
Lilly had played at the location before and was being supervised at the time, the inquest heard.
Her family described her as an energetic child who loved being outdoors, including surfing, climbing, camping and paddleboarding.
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