Three men who desperately tried to save a woman crushed by a wardrobe at the Adelphi Hotel ended up in police custody.
Chloe Haynes, 21, was found dead in her room at the Britannia run hotel by her friend in the early hours of September 10. She had been staying there with a work friend after travelling from Pwllheli, Wales, for a night out.
Her friend and two other hotel guests, who did not know Chloe, were arrested on suspicion of murder by Merseyside Police but were later released with no further action taken. Police are treating the death as "accidental", but the force is investigating the circumstances alongside Liverpool City Council's Environmental Health department.
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According to her heartbroken mum, Nicola Williams, by midnight Chloe was drunk and her friend escorted her back to the hotel room to sleep it off before heading back out. At some point during the early hours, Chloe is believed to have opened the door of the wardrobe, possibly mistaking it for the toilet door or the exit, at which point the heavy piece of furniture collapsed onto her.
The friend staying with Chloe returned and found her body under the wardrobe, and rushed out of the room to scream for help. Miss Williams said: "The other two men came over from different rooms and helped lift the wardrobe off her.
"When the police came they had to be taken away for questioning. It did sting when we read they had been arrested, they had tried to help her."
Miss Williams, 49, said she is determined to find "every detail" of how the "petite and beautiful" daughter, whom she nicknamed "birdy", lost her life in such a tragic way. She said: "I can't believe my little girl is not coming home because she opened the wrong door."
Chloe, who had a twin brother and three other siblings, travelled to Liverpool from Hafan y Mor Haven Holiday Park in Pwllheli, North Wales, where she worked. Miss Williams, from Wrexham, told the ECHO: "Chloe left Pwllheli around 7.40pm and they went to the Adelphi, there was some sort of engagement party or something. By midnight, she had been drinking shots and so on and she was a bit drunk, so her friend has taken her back to the hotel to sleep it off, and then he's gone back out.
"It seems she has got up out of the bed confused, not knowing where she is, and she's opened the door of the wardrobe maybe thinking it is the toilet or the door to go back out of the room. It was a big, old, heavy wardrobe and it's fallen on her and crushed her windpipe."
Speaking about her loss, Miss Williams said: "She loved animals, she had a little dog called Archie she was obsessed with. There are so many photos of them together.
"My little nickname for her was birdy. She was so petite and little, and when she ate she was like a little bird. She was quiet, she was somebody who didn't speak unless it needed saying.
"But in the last 12 months she was coming out of her shell, she was gaining her confidence and she had a wide circle of friends. She was kind and caring and she seemed to connect with gay men, and that was how she met the friend she went to Liverpool with."
Miss Williams said her daughter was enjoying her job waitressing in the holiday park, which also provided her accommodation as well, and was "living her best life".
She said: "She was planning to do her driving lessons and she had saved up a little bit of money for that, and she wanted to go abroad on holiday with her friends. She was just doing all the things that any 21-year-old would do.
"She was beautiful, but she had struggled with confidence about herself so she didn't really know how beautiful she was and that made her beautiful on the inside as well. She was very kind."
Miss Williams says she is determined to find out how the incident happened.
She said: "I need to know, as a mum I need to know every detail. I don't know how long she was under there before she died, and we have been told somebody heard a noise from the room around 3am but didn't report it.
"I just cannot believe my daughter is never coming home because of a wardrobe, for the sake of maybe two screws in a wall. Every year I take a picture of all my children on the couch in their Christmas outfits, and now there will be someone missing."
A spokesman for Liverpool Council said: "We can confirm that our Environmental Health department is working with Merseyside Police on an ongoing investigation into the events surrounding a death at the Adelphi Hotel."
Britannia Hotels, which operates the Adelphi, has been contacted for comment.
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