Teenage girl died from fractured skull – autopsy

An autopsy on the teenage girl found dead near Paceville on Tuesday established she died of a fractured skull sustained in a fall, as more details emerged of her last few hours.

We provide supervision on all our organised events and we operate a 24-hour emergency phone service

The police did not officially confirm the identity of the deceased, though numerous sources said solid evidence pointed to the body being that of 17-year-old Russian student Polina Rahman.

On July 16, Ms Rahman attended the welcome party of her school, Education First (EF), at Cabanas Club in Paceville. She had arrived in Malta the day before for a two-week course.

Ms Rahman, who was staying with a host family and one other student in San Ġwann, was last seen alive by a friend in the St Julian’s area between 4 and 5 a.m. on July 17.

The body was found in a valley adjacent Villa Rosa, bordering Pembroke.

Though not ruling out anything at this stage, police sources said their initial suspicion was that the deceased had been walking along Prof. W. Ganado Street in Pembroke when she tripped and fell to her death in the valley below, remaining there until the body was found.

The fact that Ms Rahman was unfamiliar with Malta and had been out late drinking could explain why she ended up so far away from her residence in San Ġwann, a police source said.

The Times visited the site yesterday and found the edge of the ridge on Prof. W. Ganado Street is about five metres from the pavement. There is no wall to stop people tumbling about 20 metres into the valley below, though there is no obvious reason to venture away from the pavement.

Parts of the rocky ridge jut out below and there is wire netting and trees and bushes that could potentially lessen the impact of a fall.

All trace of police tape had been removed by yesterday and language students walked through the valley regularly to get from their residence to the beach.

The girl’s body was discovered just before 6 p.m. on Tuesday by foreigners alerted by a foul smell coming from a fenced-off area in the valley.

The gate to this area was padlocked yesterday but a teenage Italian student who walked through the valley every day said he had never seen it locked before.

The discovery of the body close to where Ms Rahman was last seen has raised questions about how thoroughly the police had searched the area in the seven days she was missing, during which her parents arrived from Russia to spearhead a public campaign to find their daughter.

The police did not respond officially yesterday to questions about their search but a former officer said that searches were generally carried out when a person was reported missing.

The police would usually speak to the person’s friends and family to find whether they had any traditional routes or habits.

“If there was any indication of where the person might have gone missing, the police will comb the area,” he said, adding there is no hard and fast rule about how many officers took part in searches.

The Federation of English Language Teaching Organisations Malta (Feltom) said on Monday that Ms Rahman’s school must clarify why a minor was out, unsupervised, at 4 a.m.

Contacted yesterday, David Widerberg, EF International Language Centres’ president of worldwide operations, said EF organised an evening get-together for individual travellers aged 17 and over on their first evening. On the night of Ms Rahman’s disappearance, this took place at Cabanas Club in Paceville.

Ms Rahman had arrived in Malta unaccompanied to study English in EF’s International Language Schools (ILS) programme for students aged 16 and above.

EF’s recommended curfew times for under-18s on this programme are 11 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and midnight on Friday, Saturday and Monday for the initial welcome party.

“We provide supervision on all our organised events and we operate a 24-hour emergency phone service, the number of which is printed on every student’s ID card,” Mr Widerberg said.

As well as giving students a welfare briefing on their first day of school and a printed student handbook with welfare advice, they also had a welfare team that walked around the town in the evenings “offering support to any student who may need it”.

Ms Rahman’s host family was licensed by the Malta Tourism Authority and has hosted students for 10 years.

The Times spoke to many EF students around St George’s Bay yesterday, but none of them had met Ms Rahman, who had only attended one day of school.

Among the younger students, wild and unfounded rumours appeared to have been spread about what had happened to their peer, with some saying they were now scared to walk alone at night.