On the last few occasions Alphonsine Djiako Leuga was seen in her neighbourhood, she is said to have told shopkeepers that she could not afford to heat her home or buy food for her disabled daughter.
Months later, Leuga and her teenage daughter were found dead inside their Nottingham home. Police said the pair had “lain undiscovered for some time” but they were “satisfied” no crime had occurred.
Nottingham city council has now announced a review to look at the involvement agencies had with the family, whom neighbours said they had not seen for months.
It has been more than two weeks since officers broke into the family’s end-of-terrace council house after concerns were raised for their welfare, but little has emerged about the circumstances surrounding the deaths.
Their neighbours in Radford, an inner-city area of Nottingham where the mother and daughter had lived for about five years, described them as “inseparable”, with one remarking: “You wouldn’t see one without the other.”
But Jeya Bavanantharajah, a cashier at Jays Food And Wine, said he had become worried about Leuga when she came in looking tired and unwell about three months ago. He recalled: “She said: ‘We’re very cold and we have no food.’ She asked me if she could have a couple of frozen pizzas on credit. She brought the money back two weeks later, it was £2 or £3.
“She said: ‘My baby has no food. I’m not well, my house has no heating and I’m very cold.’ I said: ‘It’s winter, you need heating.’ She said: ‘Maybe God will help me,’ and then she left.”
A few doors down at Food Basket, an African butcher and grocery store, a shop worker, Babatunde, said he too had grown concerned about Leuga in December when she came in. “She wasn’t feeling fine, she had a swollen face and she said the cold was too much,” he said.
“I said: ‘Why don’t you heat up the house?’ and she said she couldn’t pay the bill. She was seriously down. She complained about the building, saying that there’s mould in her house and all the terrible things that can happen as a result of the house not being heated.”
Babatunde said he believed it was in February that he had last seen Leuga, who he had come to know as “Cameroon woman” after the country in which she was born.
“Her daughter faced challenges but she was always looked after. They seemed happy together,” he said. “Last summer social services came to ask us about them. But she was a quiet person. The only thing I knew about her was that she was in Italy before she came to the UK, and she complained that the way that people were taken care of in Italy was better than in the UK.”
Social services had also visited Leuga’s nextdoor neighbour, Deborah Williams, three times in the year that she had lived there. Williams said she could hear Leuga was at home during their third visit, but she wouldn’t answer the door. “She was just talking to them through the window. I just presumed she really didn’t want anybody intruding,” she said.
Williams said she had noticed that Leuga’s windows had been open since February and that the property appeared unkempt.
“But I didn’t put two and two together to say something’s gone wrong because my mum, who lived here for 40 years before me, said they go away for months at a time and then come back,” she said. “At some point, I did hear what I thought was cats, but in hindsight I realise it wasn’t. It was a very low-pitch cry that went on for hours.”
She added: “It’s really weird that she wasn’t missed by anybody other than social services.”
Williams said she had once seen Leuga waving goodbye to her older daughter, believed to be in her early 20s. Leuga also had a brother, who had arrived in Nottingham on 25 May hoping to find answers about her death, but he had returned home to Liège, Belgium, that same day.
Naomi and Tatiane, two women who had helped Leuga when she arrived in the UK, said police had told Leuga’s brother that they couldn’t give him information because he wasn’t her next of kin.
Tatiane said: “He was so disappointed. He is looking for answers because he’s so concerned that this could happen when she was living on a main road. It’s just so strange.”
Speaking at Nottingham Salvation Outreach, a church where Leuga had worshipped, Naomi said she had met Leuga when she arrived in the UK in 2016 after a divorce in Italy.
“My husband just found her with her two girls at Nottingham train station one night and she said she was looking for a hotel to sleep,” she recalled. The family ended up taking in Leuga and her daughters for two weeks.
Naomi, who did not want to give her surname, said Leuga had told her she had left a “difficult” relationship and wanted to start a new life with her children in Nottingham.
Months later, Tatiane, who also did not want to give her surname, found Leuga outside Nottingham’s Victoria shopping centre in similar circumstances. “She was asking for help. She said she didn’t have anywhere to go so I brought her in for two weeks, I just had to help her.”
Tatiane gave her money to help her rent a property before the family was housed by the council.
Over the years, the pair had little contact with Leuga, who had previously asked to borrow money for food. Naomi said she had last heard from Leuga in February 2023 when she had asked her for £100. “She said it was for something she was doing online. She said: ‘I’m in something, I need that money.’”
The pair said they had found her death very painful and were desperate to find out what had happened to her. “You lose someone like that and you feel you could have done more,” Naomi said.
On Tuesday, Nottinghamshire police said it had established that no crime had taken place in the “distressing” case.
DCI Ruby Burrow said: “Since this tragic discovery, we have been working hard to establish the circumstances surrounding these deaths. Officers are now satisfied no crime has occurred and so the matter has been referred to the coroner.”
A Nottingham city council spokesperson said: “This is a tragic situation and our thoughts are with the family and friends of the mother and daughter who died. The full circumstances will be the subject of an inquest and a full review will be carried out to look at the involvement that all local agencies had with the family.
“Ahead of the inquest and review, we are unable to discuss the detail of this case, however we can confirm that the council had provided support to the family through its care and housing services.”
