She said: “The comments we received in letters to David from his classmates after his death best sum up how loved and well thought of he was and we would like to share a few of those. All around he was a son that you were proud of.”Īfter the inquest, David’s mother, Zoe Mukoro-Dibie, read a tearful tribute to a “very special boy”.

David joined the cadets to follow his dream of becoming an aeronautical engineer.ĭibie said: “He was a lovely boy. Persaud recorded that David died of an anomalous origin of the right coronary artery and seizure.ĭavid’s father, Felix Dibie, said his son was a fit and active teenager who never complained of any heart pain. He added that, “in hindsight”, the cadets should have had a mobile phone with them in case of emergency.Įfemena was taken by air ambulance to hospital but was dead on arrival. When asked if the radios had been tested over the distance, White answered: “Not personally, no.” There were several moments of silence before White quietly answered: “No, probably not.” The normal ratio of adults to cadets should have been one to four but there were 13 children and only three staff, the inquest was told. He was then asked: “In terms of the adult staff members present, was there tight and effective supervision of the cadets?” White initially replied that there was adequate supervision because two senior cadets, aged 17 and 18, were “in charge”. Persaud asked: “Between 10pm on Saturday 22 March and 7am on Sunday 23 March, do you consider there was tight and effective supervision of the cadets?” Sqn Ldr Christopher White, who planned the training event with his brother Michael, admitted there had not been adequate adult supervision at the camp. Sqn Ldr Neil Knowles, who was delegated to sign off on the training exercise, told the inquest he would have expected it to have been cancelled because there was a lack of adult supervision, or for more staff to have been drafted in. “So I would say it could be around half an hour before I finally reached the staff.” When older cadets became aware of a problem early on the Sunday morning, they tried desperately to contact the adult supervisors by walkie-talkie.Īsked how long it was until help arrived, senior cadet Craig Barnett said: “I got on my radio and started moving about to see if I could get a bit of signal but I thought that because it was still quite early the staff may still be asleep, so that is why I couldn’t get in touch with them straight away, and because the area we were in had quite a lot of trees that could interfere with the signal. The inquest was told that another cadet was awoken about 10 times on the night of March 22 by “strange gargling or coughing” noises coming from David, who was also shaking violently. She recommended the RAF should consider having defibrillators on cadet training exercises, said the “new policy on communications remains unclear” and recommended checks be carried out before sleeping. “There was no evidence during the course of the inquest that there was a real prospect that David’s death could have been avoided,” she said. After convincing his parents to allow him to join the air cadets, David set off for the weekend trip on 21 March, but became ill the following day after a day of strenuous exercises, and later died.ĭelivering a narrative conclusion, the assistant deputy coroner, Nadia Persaud, said she did not consider that the failings of the way the camp was run contributed to the “hard-working, diligent” teenager’s death, but made several recommendations to the RAF.

Family seizure death dream