A 30-YEAR-OLD woman found dead in the sea in St Aubin’s Bay had been drinking heavily the day before her body was discovered, an inquest has heard.
Ketevani Kasrashvili’s post-mortem showed a blood-alcohol level around four-and-a-half times the legal limit for driving – the equivalent of 19 single measures of spirits.
Ms Kasrashvili moved to Jersey from her native Georgia in 2022 to work in the hospitality industry.
On 14 September last year she joined her boyfriend and a group of friends and colleagues socialising at the Radisson Blu hotel while watching the Jersey International Air Display.
The inquest heard yesterday that Ms Kasrashvili, known as Katie, arrived at the Radisson Blu at around 12.30pm and went on to consume gin-and-tonics, white wine and prosecco over the next eight hours before leaving the hotel at 8.42pm.
Police coroner’s officer Andy Bisson said Ms Kasrashvili briefly returned to the flat at Castle Quay where she was living with her boyfriend, but was then recorded on CCTV at 10pm as she left the building while carrying a bottle of spirits.
The inquest heard that subsequent CCTV evidence showed Ms Kasrashvili stumbling along the beach past Le Frégate café and the West Park bathing pool, with the last footage timed at 2am. Mr Bisson said she was spotted by a dog walker in the sea near La Haule just before 7am, but that there had been no sign of life after she was pulled from the water, subsequently being pronounced dead by a paramedic.
In a statement, pathologist Dr Miklos Perenyei said he believed the “remarkable” alcohol level was likely to have “played a significant role” in the victim being incapacitated.
Ms Kasrashvili’s absence was noticed at around 4am by her boyfriend, who said in a statement that he initially believed she had gone to stay with a friend.
Relief coroner Advocate Cyril Whelan found that the cause of her death was immersion in water and acute alcohol intoxication. He expressed his condolences to Ms Kasrashvili’s brother David, who listened to the evidence via videolink, and the rest of her family.
