By C1 Staff
UNITED KINGDOM — A prison officer was found dead at her apartment after being reported by a colleague for improperly using sick leave and fired from her post.
Janet Norridge was on sick leave following a health scare when a colleague saw her watching a rugby match at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, according to The Mirror. The colleague reported her and Norridge was suspended.
Norridge had recently been informed that she had an 80 percent chance of getting bowel cancer, a disease one of her relatives had recently died of.
With her doctor’s permission, Norridge took three weeks off to come to terms with the news and decided to go out one night with friends to the sports game.
A close friend told The Mirror that Norridge was then charged with misconduct by her employers after being reported and terminated, which “destroyed” her.
“She was so proud of her job and her profession,” Rebecca Rolls, the friend, said. Rolls said that Norridge had aspirations of becoming a prison governor.
Norridge appealed the decision, but ultimately lost. She was found dead in her flat a short time later.
An inquest into Norridge’s death won an employment tribunal for her grieving parents, saying that prison authorities had made “an error in law” by terminating their daughter.
The coroner handling Norridge’s autopsy, David Bowen, said he would be writing to the director of the prison service to ask for a review of how officers are treated during the disciplinary process. He ruled her death a suicide.
“She felt she had been unfairly dismissed,” Bowen said. “That was the matter that was playing on her mind.”