London: An Indian-origin wife was said to be "in bits" after her husband`s mysterious death in a swimming pool at a luxury hotel near London.
Gurpreet Kpakiwa`s husband Komba Kpakiwa was found floating face down in the pool at Down Hall Country House Hotel, in Essex, on Saturday evening with a 22-year-old student nurse Josephine Foday.
Media reports here have referred to Foday as his girlfriend, who was celebrating her birthday at the hotel with the 31-year-old supermarket manager from Erith in Kent, south-east England.
Gurpreet, who has two children aged 4 and 7 with Komba - originally from Sierra Leone - was said to be in shock and being cared for by her family.
"She is in bits and struggling to work out what happened to Komba on Saturday. She`s in a bad way and is hardly talking to anyone. We`re all desperate for answers," a family friend told the `Evening Standard`.
Komba Kpakiwa`s brother Sahr claimed that Foday had been a family friend and his brother had taken her to the hotel to celebrate her birthday.
"What I know about my brother is that he was a nice and loyal man and he was respectful of his family and always proud of them. We have a close, but large, family. We are all distraught. We are there to support his wife," he said.
Asked about the circumstances of his brother`s death, he added: "It was just a tragic accident. How they came to drown is as much a mystery to us as to anyone else."
He said his mother was flying over from their family home in Sierra Leone.
An inquest into the deaths was opened and adjourned yesterday.
Police said a provisional post-mortem examination found their deaths were consistent with drowning and are not being treated as suspicious, but further toxicology tests are awaited.
PTI
