Grieving parents of Brit, 20, who drowned in pal’s holiday home pool after party insist foul play may be involved

THE grieving parents of a Brit student who drowned in her pal’s holiday home pool say foul play has not been ruled out – despite the investigation being closed. Holly Woodcock, 20, was found dead after a party in France in 2024 – but her parents are still demanding answers over her mysterious death. The Manchester Metropolitan University student was found dead in France Credit: ITV Holly Woodcock died aged 20 in August 2024 Credit: ITV An inquest into the tragedy at a villa in St Hilaire-la-Foret said she likely died of drowning – but that an “exact cause” of death had not been established. Holly’s devastated parents say there are still many unanswered questions about their daughter’s death in the early hours of August 2, 2024. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Lee, 55, and Joanna, 57, called on French cops to “do their job properly” and reopen the botched investigation. Holly’s dad told Good Morning Britain: “Although they’ve closed the investigation, both the medical examiner and the prosecutor said they can’t rule out third-party activity and they can’t rule out a traumatic cause.” Joanna and Lee Woodcock say French cops botched the investigation Credit: ITV Lee and Joanna Woodcock have demanded a thorough probeCredit: Refer to source The victim’s mum Joanna said cops only interviewed six out of 20 people who were at the villa on the night of Holly’s death. She said: “It took 14 minutes for emergency services to be called, and the one of the homeowners is a paediatric consultant.” Lee added: “The witness statements are pretty sketchy, there were two people that were not interviewed at all. “Out of the six people who were interviewed, two said they couldn’t remember anything.” Most read in The Sun Her parents have called for a proper investigation Credit: ITV Holly was found dead on August 2, 2024 Credit: ITV The parents also said French police focused very strongly on Holly’s drinking habits – as if they were trying to fit the case into a narrative. Joanna said: “It was focused on Holly’s drinking habits, [like] ‘was she an aggressive drunk?’ “It was all focused on alcohol, their assumption was basically to fit the statement into their assumption of a drunk British girl.” Lee said 80 per cent of all questions put forward to them were about Holly’s relationship with alcohol. The site of Holly’s death was also “never treated as a scene”, Joanna said. She claimed the pool looked as if it had been swam in since Holly’s death when they visited for the first time. The couple added that the homeowner had bizarrely invited the grieving parents round to swim whenever they wanted. Joanna pleaded: “I’ve always felt really strongly that if this had been a politician’s daughter, this would’ve been treated differently, someone influential.” French police took an initial reading of her alcohol level, and after discovering it was high, they destroyed all Holly’s DNA samples. “The investigation… it was taking witness statements, that’s as far as the police work has gone,” Lee said. Joanna previously told the Daily Mail: “I want to say to Keir Starmer, if this were your daughter, you would not have been dealt with this way, where the case would have been dropped after just a few days. “The French police put the drowning down to Holly having drunk alcohol, but her shorts were found folded up by the side of the pool; that is not something you do if you are drunk enough to drown.” Photos taken just half an hour before her death show the young student – who was studying English and multimedia journalism at Manchester Met University – dancing in the kitchen. At around 1am, Holly and some friends decided to go swimming in the pool by the house and ran off to get changed. Then Holly’s friend messaged her at 1:25am asking where she was – but received no reply. At 1:30am, the young woman was found lifeless at the bottom of the pool. When paramedics arrived at the scene, they tried to resuscitate Holly – who briefly had a heartbeat – before pronouncing her dead at 3:09am. An inquest in France ruled that “the exact cause of death has not been determined, and that a traumatic cause of death has not been ruled out. “Given the context of the report and his findings, the most likely cause of death is drowning”. The couple’s MP Daniel Francis has also called for answers in this “heartbreaking” case. He said: “If this was your child you would not expect to have the issues, such as evidence being destroyed, discrepancies with timelines and DNA samples being destroyed. “There are a number of issues in the investigation and if I were Mr and Mrs Woodcock I would be asking the same questions and these are questions they need answers to”, he told the Daily Mail. The Foreign Office said: “We are supporting the family of a British woman who died in France in 2024. “Minister for Europe, Stephen Doughty, has also spoken to members of Holly’s family.” Comment now