A seven-year-old girl has died after being strangled by her own hooded top when it got caught on a door handle at her home.
An inquest heard that Kimora Zondo, from Cardiff, was found after her mother, Vonnie Dube, woke up from a nap. Dube’s nine-year-old son told her his sister was “pretending to be sleepy”.
The pair found the seven-year-old unresponsive and called an ambulance. She later died in hospital.
The assistant coroner Nadim Bashir recorded a conclusion of accidental death at the hearing in Pontypridd and said there was no evidence of how the seven-year-old got caught on the handle.
When Kimora came home from primary school on 7 March she changed from her school uniform into a pink hoodie. Kimora’s mother fell asleep and when she woke she asked her son where his sister was.
A postmortem found that Kimora died from pressure to the neck caused by a ligature. The pathologist Dr Richard Jones told the inquest he was satisfied that the mark on Kimora’s neck had been caused by the hooded top she was wearing, which had a hole in the top of it.
He added: “If you asked the question: ‘Is it possible for a child wearing a hooded top to actually be suspended from that handle in the manner which is suggested by her brother?’ then yes it’s possible, but quite how she got into that position I can’t say.”
Bashir said: “In the circumstances the only possible explanation that can be given in this case was a hole in the hoodie, and Kimora was in the hallway with her head close to the handle to allow her to get caught on the handle. [She] was unable to extricate herself in the seconds it would take to lose consciousness.”
Police carried out an investigation into the girl’s death, including interviewing her brother twice about how he found his sister.
