Ella-Louise Tunney, 26, had an epileptic fit and fell in her hot tub
A young businesswoman who drowned in a hot tub in her family home after having an epileptic fit was not found for three days.
Ella-Louise Tunney’s father called police after she appeared to vanish from their home in Eton Wick, near Windsor in Berkshire.
He searched nearby fields and phoned her workplace, in a desperate bid to find her.
When police searched the property three days later they lifted the lid of the hot tub and found her submerged beneath the water, wearing swimwear.
Family members looking for Ms Tunney had passed it numerous times but did not think anything was amiss as the lid was closed.
Investigators believe the lid was blown across the tub by the wind, concealing her body.
Ms Tunney had been painting her nails ahead of spending an evening in the hot tub with friends when she fell in.
The friends did not turn up as arranged, an inquest heard, so the alarm was not raised.
Ms Tunney had been diagnosed with epilepsy as a teenager but had managed to keep it under control with medication.
But in November 2017 the condition worsened and she suffered black outs. On one occasion, she had to be dragged out of the bath by a colleague on a work trip.
When she disappeared on June 23, her father Lee Tunney assumed she had gone to sleep in the annex which she lived in, some 60 yards from the main house at the end of the garden.
When she failed to appear the next day, he thought she might be out watching the World Cup with friends, despite having left all of her belongings at home.
By Monday, June 25, Mr Tunney began desperately searching a field across the road looking for his daughter, the Berkshire coroner was told.
It was only when police arrived and searched the Tunney’s home and grounds that Ella-Louise was discovered in the hot tub.
Emma Jones, assistant coroner for Berkshire, heard from her father and her sister, Jodie McGlinchey, who had posted across social media to try to find her.
Mr Tunney told the inquest: ‘Ella was expecting friends around in the afternoon to play in the hot tub.
‘Ella asked me to set the hot tub up, which I did. I went out during the day and when I came back there was no sign of anyone in the kitchen, her handbag and phone I think were on the side.
‘I naturally assumed Ella was tired and she had gone back down to the annex to sleep it off, which she does quite often. I left it at that because all of her stuff was there.
‘On Sunday, I thought it was a bit strange I hadn’t seen Ella, but again sometimes with Ella she might work very hard, go out on Friday, then she might stay in the annex. I thought she was really tired and was having a good lie-in.’
On Monday he phoned her workplace Alpha FX, where she worked as head of settlements and found they also hadn’t heard from her.
He then filed a missing person report with the police.
Mr Tunney said that despite members of the family walking past the hot tub several times, nobody had seen anything as a floating cover concealed Ms Tunney’s body, submerged in two to three feet of water.
When Police Constable Mohammed Sajad from Thames Valley Police arrived at 10.15am, he found Mr Tunney opposite the house in a field with his dog, looking for his daughter.
Pc Sajad told the coroner: ‘That changed my whole mentality, what must be going through Mr Tunney’s mind to be going through a field looking for his daughter?
‘Our policy is that we completely search the address to the best of our ability. Everything looked undisturbed, clothes were on the bed in the annexe. It was obvious someone was living there.
‘We were going back through the garden to the main house, when I remembered Mr Tunney mentioned to me the last time he saw her was on the Saturday and she was preparing the hot tub. Something caught my eye in the pool, my first thought was, ‘no, it can’t be’. I stepped away to have a look.’
When PC Sajad and Mr Tunney pulled back the floating cover on the hot tub, they found Ms Tunney lying face down.
PC Sajad suspected foul play initially but after an investigation it was found Ms Tunney had freshly painted nails which were undamaged. There was no suggestion of third party involvement.
Officers discovered text messages Ms Tunney had sent to friends on the Saturday between 3.30 and 3.40pm, one saying, ‘chilling in the hot tub’, and the last outgoing message reading, ‘I’m in it now’.
Ella-Louise’s best friend, Hannah Hinton, told the inquest: ‘Ella liked a drink, she would binge drink on a Friday night. A combination of working so hard, the drinking and the epilepsy just wiped her out.’
The inquest heard Ella-Louise had been doing 12 to 13 hour days at work with extensive travelling but she had told colleagues she would not her epilepsy rule her life.
A post mortem examination gave the cause of death as drowning after having an epileptic fit.
The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death.