London [UK]: An Irish human rights lawyer, who was in the news last year for verbally abusing an Air India flight crew after being refused alcohol on her flight en-route from Mumbai to London, was found dead at her home in East Sussex in England on June 1, days after being released from prison.
Simone Burns, 50, had been sentenced to six months in jail in April for shouting racist abuse and spitting at the flight attendants. She was released from prison two weeks ago, The Irish Times reported.
A Sussex Police spokesman confirmed the death that happened 13 days after Burns release on licence from Bronzefield women’s prison.
“The body of a woman found at Beachy Head, Eastbourne, on 1st June has been identified as 50-year-old Simone Burns from Hove. The death is not being treated as suspicious and next of kin have been informed. The matter has been passed to the East Sussex coroner’s officer,” a Sussex police spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Quoting a source, UK-based Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Ms Burns’s “world fell apart” after her conviction and she had been targeted by internet trolls after the clip of her shouting went viral.
During her trial at Isleworth crown court in April, Burns’s lawyers had said that the lawyer had no recollection of the incident and had received death threats online. She admitted being drunk on an aircraft and assault.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]