UK: Police say there are no suspicious circumstances about death of young Romani girl in Sheffield

According to the police command in South Yorkshire, England, which is investigating the death of a Romani girl named Janička in Sheffield, the circumstances of her death are not suspicious. The police have given a statement to news server Romea.cz about the case.

A tempestuous online discussion of the death has been taking place internationally among Romani community members. “Emergency services were called to a home in Cranworth Road, Sheffield just before 18:10 on Tuesday, 2 January after learning that an eight-year-old girl was having breathing difficulties,” a press spokesperson for the South Yorkshire police command told news server Romea.cz.

“She was transported to hospital where, unfortunately, she died on Sunday 7 January. There are no suspicious circumstances with regard to her death and the case file will now be prepared for the coroner,” the press spokesperson said.

In many countries that follow the Anglo-American legal system, a coroner is a state official whose main responsibility is to investigate deaths and issue death certificates in cases that are ambiguous, a function that may be performed by any certified doctor and that has been in place in the Czech Republic since 2011. Czech and Slovak Romani people have been vigorously discussing the case by way of Facebook in recent days because the account of the girl’s death remains mysterious to them.

The girl lived in Sheffield with her family and, on that fateful day, is said to have been playing in an attic room with her younger siblings and the children of her relatives. For reasons that are unknown, she is said to have wound the belt of her bathrobe around her neck and strangled herself.

The girl was without vital signs for 40 minutes before the emergency services revived her and put her on life support. The damage caused to her was, however, so serious that doctors recommended her parents remove her from life support several days later.