A teenager plunged to her death off a cliff edge while trying to retrieve her pet cockapoo after it began chasing a rabbit, an inquest heard on Tuesday.
Keeleigh Plant had been walking her two pet cockapoo dogs with her new boyfriend one afternoon in May 2023 when the incident happened.
Keeleigh, 18, and Oliver Griffiths were walking the dogs Bertie and Cooper off their leads at Hope Cove, south Devon, when they saw a wild rabbit and chased after it.
Coroner’s officer Jim Stein told an inquest at Exeter Coroner’s Court: ‘One of the dogs did not come back on command so Keeleigh ran after the dog and sadly fell off the side of the cliff.’
She plunged 100 feet onto a rocky beach below and died from multiple injuries despite the best efforts of rescuers and people in the area to save her.
Her boyfriend Oliver said he had not walked this part of the coastal path before but Keeleigh had with her sister as she regularly exercised the pets over a five-mile trek.
He said the dogs were off their leads when they saw the rabbit and ran after it with Bertie running towards the cliff edge.
‘We were both trying to get them back,’ he said as they stepped over a low wooden railing near the edge.
They grabbed Cooper and put him on his lead, but Keeleigh was leaning over a few feet from the cliff edge trying to retrieve Bertie.
Oliver could only partially see her, but then she fell and he did not know if she had lost her footing or the cliff edge had crumbled.
‘I was not close enough to grab her,’ he said.
A lady sitting on a bench nearby said she could hear Keeleigh ‘calling the dog’ and could see her bottom as she leaned over the cliff edge.
‘I did not hear her scream. She was not pushed,’ said the witness.
She said the young couple were on the cliffs for ten minutes ‘trying to get the dog back’.
Police went to the scene and said the cliff edge was uneven and jagged, but there were no suspicious circumstances.
Keeleigh, from Galmpton, Devon, had been due to take a gap year before going to Winchester University to study finance.
Her mother Pauline said Keeleigh was ‘quite a private person and home was her safe place’ but was a good student who asked for additional school work.
The area coroner for Devon, Plymouth and Torbay Alison Longhorn recorded an accidental death conclusion.
She said the teenager died while attempting to retrieve her dog adding: ‘This was a really tragic accident.
‘Sadly cliffs are dangerous places and people try to rescue their dogs without thinking of their own safety.’