THE tragic death of 15-year-old Hannah Bragg has shocked Tavistock. Sarah Pitt talked to her parents David and Karen about their daughter.
THE window is open in the bedroom and a pair of girl’s sandals are neatly arranged on top of a shoebox. The hairbrush on the dressing table has strands of hair in it. A reminder about GCSE psychology work is pinned to the wall. A vase of flowers are still blooming.
On this hot afternoon, it looks like the girl whose room this is – on a farm near Gulworthy – will be home any minute.
The horror for Hannah Bragg’s parents, though, is that she won’t.
For Hannah, who was just 15 and in Year 10 at Tavistock College, collapsed and died after taking what police believe was the drug MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, in a field on a hot midsummer Saturday afternoon not far from Tavistock Canal.
She was airlifted by air ambulance to Derriford Hospital but there was nothing doctors could do to save her.
When mum Karen heard the phone go at 5pm that day, she was expecting it to be Hannah. ‘We always have a Chinese on Saturday nights and she knew she had to be back by six,’ she said.
In fact, that phone call was from the police. Karen and her husband David were ‘blue-lighted’ all the way to Derriford Hospital. They prayed there had been some mistake. Then they were taken to see their daughter.
‘We are still expecting to see her walk back in the door at any moment,’ said David, as the couple sat at the kitchen table, stunned. It is six days after their daughter’s death. ‘We just can’t believe it. If we hadn’t seen her in the hospital we couldn’t believe anyone.’
Hannah’s death has sent shockwaves through her school and the community.
This caring girl, who loved the outdoors, was a keen rugby player and horse rider. She looked after other children who were ill and, her mum recalled, could never stand for people badmouthing others.
‘She wanted to be a vet nurse and most recently a nurse because she was just so caring,’ said Karen. ‘She would care for anything, it didn’t matter what it was. With our lambs, she’d look after all the little runts. There was one that lost all its locks, so she called him Baldy Locks.’
Every morning, before school, she would set her alarm to get up early to go and feed the lambs and her horse, Micky, before leaving for school. Every Sunday, from the age of ten, she stepped into help her dad with the milking, a three-hour job.
David shared pictures on his phone of a recent shopping trip with Hannah and one of her friends. She was smiling and laughing as she tried on cowboy hats and coats in a vintage shop.
‘There’s something about going shopping with girls, they get so excited so you end up getting excited too,’ he said.
Hannah, her mum recalled, was most definitely ‘an outdoorsy girl’.
She competed in showjumping as a member of East Cornwall Hunt Pony Club and was also a rugby player, in two teams – Tavistock Under 15s and Devonport Services Under 15s.
‘She was 5ft1 and dinky, and some of those other rugby players were massive,’ said Karen. ‘She would tackle any size though. I suppose because she had older brothers, she would just grab them. She was like that with the cows too.’
Hannah had also started hunting with the Spooners and West Dartmoor Hunt. Karen ordered a selection of dresses online for Hannah and three friends to try on and David took them all to the hunt ball.
Hannah was just eight when her mum Karen was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer.
Miraculously, after taking part in a drug trial, Karen’s cancer went into remission.
‘We think that is what made Hannah so caring,’ said her dad. ‘She looked after Karen.’
David and Karen and Hannah’s three brothers, in their 20s, have been down together to walk from the school to the spot where Hannah died, where cards, flowers and messages have been laid by Hannah’s devastated classmates.
Hannah’s parents know that they want all the students in their daughter’s year at school – all 170 of them – to be involved in her funeral.
They hope it will be held at St Eustachius’ Parish Church in Tavistock on Friday, July 20 at 12 noon.
As the police investigation into the circumstances that surrounding her death continue, her parents are pleading with young people to be wary of drugs.
‘If it can happen to Hannah, it can happen to anyone,’ said Karen. ‘We want them to think “Hannah took this and she died” Am I prepared for what could happen?’