AN inquest into the death of Mordialloc-raised woman Elly Warren has failed to return a conclusive finding.
Warren went to Mozambique for a six-week trip in 2016. Days before she was scheduled to come home, her body was found face-down near a bathroom in Tofo. She died aged just 20.
For more than seven years, Warren’s family has been fighting to have her death thoroughly investigated. The application for an inquest into her death was accepted at the end of 2020. The inquest took place in August 2023, and the coroner published his findings last month.
The coroner wrote that Warren had “aspirated a significant amount of sand”, which caused her death. He did not conclusively rule that someone else had contributed to her death, but wrote that “it is possible”.
“The available evidence does not enable me to determine the precise circumstances that led to Elly aspirating the sand that led to her death,” coroner John Cain wrote. “On the available evidence, I am unable to determine whether Elly aspirated the sand at the location adjacent to the toilet block near the marketplace in Tofo beach, where she was found on the morning of 9 November 2016, or whether she aspirated the sand at some other location and was moved post-mortem.”
The inquest also found that Warren was not likely to be intoxicated when she died.
Warren’s father Paul Warren expressed his frustration with the AFP and coroner’s findings after they were handed down. He said he was “upset” with the outcome and that “the coroner has let down the family”.
“This is more than a possibility that Elly was murdered. There is no way possible she can breathe in these amounts of sand on her own, there has to be a third party involvement here and it should be homicide as the finding,” he said. “The impact of sand in Elly’s airways is really the decisive factor here and was not given enough weight in the coroner’s findings.
“What I mean by the coroner letting down the family – the evidence of the abundances of packed sand in Elly’s airways is pretty decisive in my book and can’t in this manner be breathed in naturally.”
In a meeting with AFP officers this year, Mozambique authorities revealed that Warren’s death had been ruled a homicide, but no perpetrator had been established. Proceedings overseas are on hold until a perpetrator can be determined, Mozambique representatives said in the meeting.
Three autopsies were conducted on Warren after her death – one in Mozambique, one in South Africa, and finally one in Australia.
During the inquest process, the AFP requested that Mozambique authorities join their investigation. They received no response.
First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News – 10 January 2024
