A young and ‘beautiful’ woman who fell from a busy motorway bridge sadly died in the same way as her mother died 15 years prior – as she survived the fatal fall
A teenager plunged to hear death 15 years after her mother died the same way.
Teenager Yazmina Howard fell from a highway bridge, after previously surviving the tragic moment her mum, Maxine Carr plunged from a seven-story balcony while holding her.
Maxine was holding three-year-old Yazmina when she fell to her death from their apartment in 2003, and her baby was found alive but very cold and whimpering.
The mother, who lived in Maidstone, Kent was believed to have fled an abusive relationship, and was worried her ex, Ivan Delgardo was planing on snatching Yazmina and return to his native Spain. Her new boyfriend at the time, Philip Hickman had told investigators the couple had “two years of aggression” from Delgardo before her death.
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At the inquest, Maxine’s neighbour Nicola Morrell said she heard “raised voices” from flat above around 9pm. She said: “I could see from my window that someone was walking across the balcony with a child. I saw objects thrown from the top balcony and I could hear that a child was upset.”
While she had called the police, she noted that things had “calmed down” but what came next was something she will never forget. She recalled how she was later awakened by a “very loud thud” and a child crying. “It was a horrible noise. It was fairly quiet to begin with, but it got louder and when it was loud, it was blood-curdling.”
During the fall with her mother, Yazmina suffered a broken arm, rib and jaw but went to live with her grandparents Janet and Michael Howard who raised her. But sadly in 2018, Yazmina died after she fell from a motorway bridge on the M20 in Larkfield, Kent.
The 18-year-old plummeted to her death after she had been out for a pizza with her friend that night. Janet, 68, said: “I got a text from her at 9:23 p.m. saying she was okay. That was the last I heard. Whatever happened from then, we’ll never know — we don’t know what has driven her to this at all.”
The grandmother had cared for Yazmina as she appeared to “battle through” the loss of her mum and called her a “beautiful girl inside and out who would never hurt anybody.”
“She was an emotional person, which may have been connected to the trauma she experienced when we lost her mum, but she seemed to battle through it all,” Janet said.
“She was strong. She’d call us Nan and Granddad but sometimes ‘Mum’ would slip out – she was more like a daughter than a granddaughter to us. Yazmina didn’t smoke, she didn’t go out clubbing.
“Even when she drank wine, she’d make sure it was vegan because she loved animals and cared about the environment. That’s the kind of girl Yazmina was.”
Yazmina’s grandfather, Michael Howard, the 70, added: “She spent time with us but also at an apartment in Hart Street, which was convenient for her college. She studied art, math and multimedia but didn’t know whether she wanted to carry on with the course.
“She’d tell us, ‘I’ll have to start all over again or get a terrible job with terrible money’. There are more and more children getting like this and they rarely get the help and support they need. It’s left a big void in our life.”
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