Family of scholar who fell 15 flooring to demise reveal stunning sight once they noticed physique
The family of Kenyan student and hotel housekeeper Sheila Jepkorir Chebii, 25, are demanding answers after she fell from the 19th floor of Sydney’s Meriton Suites in Australia
Sheila Jepkorir Chebii(Image: Facebook)
The devastated family of a 25-year-old student are demanding answers after she plunged to her death from a luxury high-rise. Sheila Jepkorir Chebii, a Kenyan international student, plunged to her death in mysterious circumstances after falling from the 19th floor of a hotel where she worked as a housekeeper.
The incident occurred on May 17, at the Meriton Suites in Sydney, Australia. Chebii was found on a fourth-floor podium. Despite police initially treating her death as a suspected suicide, Chebii’s family has rejected that account.
After seeing her body in the morgue, they are now demanding answers. Chebii’s condition of her body was found to be highly inconsistent with the catastrophic injuries typically caused by a 15-story drop.
Relatives reportedly say they were left horrified not only by Chebii’s death, but by what they describe as the unexpectedly “minimal” injuries they saw when viewing her body. They claim she had a small wound on her forehead, a minor dent over one eye, bruising along her arms and a slight injury to her hip, Baringo Online reported.
These injuries they believe are inconsistent with such a long fall. Her father, Samuel Chebii, and members of the Kenyan diaspora in Sydney argue a drop from that height would normally result in catastrophic trauma and multiple fractures, the Daily Nation reported.
It has also been alleged that some of the bruising on Chebii’s hands and arms could suggest she tried to defend herself during a struggle. The family has also highlighted what they say are further inconsistencies in the timeline and evidence, NTV Kenya reported.
“When we heard she’d fallen from the 19th floor, everybody was prepared to see a shattered body,” friend Chepchir Chir, part of the Sydney Kenyan community, told the Daily Mail. “But when we got there, the body was intact.
“No fractures, no shattered skull, nothing. She was just peaceful.”
They claim police logs record her time of death as 12.30pm, yet phone records reportedly show she was texting and making calls to a cousin at around that same time. They also point to CCTV “blind spots”.
While footage reportedly shows Chebii entering a 19th-floor corridor to carry out cleaning duties, they say there is no video of the fall itself. They also said there was no camera coverage of the fourth-floor podium where she was discovered.
Relatives claimed that they were disturbed that, in the aftermath, the hotel employer was reportedly unreachable to them while operations continued as normal, The Kenyan Diaspora Media reported.
Chir said: “Why did it take so long for Sheila’s employer to contact her family? They called around two days [after] – what happened?
“We want to know what happened on the 19th floor, in the room she was in – was there a client in there? Is there anything that client saw?
“Has the person who identified (Sheila’s) body on the fourth floor been questioned, because that is a very critical witness? It’s been 16 days and there’s been nothing in the news.
“If you see a drunk driver hitting a car, it’d be all over the news. But a young girl fell from the 19th floor and no one knows about it.
“That is so wrong.” Because of these concerns, the family says it has delayed burial arrangements and appealed to the Kenyan High Commission in Australia and Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for intervention.
They reportedly want standard closure procedures halted until a full and transparent forensic autopsy is carried out, and have joined calls from the Kenyan community in Australia for a thorough investigation into what happened in Sheila’s final moments. A GoFundMe has been launched to help Chebii’s family cover legal and administrative fees, funeral costs and the repatriation of her body to Kenya.
At the time of writing, more than $4,000 (about £2,130) has been raised towards a $12,000 (about £6,200) target.
