Tributes paid to woman found dead in street after storm hits Blackpool

Linda McKenna, 44, suffered devastating head injuries after being blown over in the early hours of Sunday, in the middle of Storm Jorge.

She was taken to Blackpool Victoria Hospital, where she died at 6.30pm on Monday.

Her heartbroken mum Sue, 62, of Albert Road, said: “She fell and hit her head on the concrete. There was nothing they could do.

“She was at my house until 1.30am that morning. She was fine - she gave me a hug and went on her way.

“The next day I got a knock on the door from her key worker saying she had been found unconscious in the town.”

Sue said she at first feared that her daughter had been attacked on her way home, as she was found with a cut to her face by two passers-by.

But CCTV footage from the Houndshill Shopping Centre showed her falling twice outside Specsavers on Victoria Street.

“It’s very hard for me, but at the same time it takes a weight off my shoulders because I know she wasn’t beaten up. It was a freak accident. I could never have lived with thinking that somebody had beaten up my daughter and left her there,” Sue said.

Linda was a familiar face among Blackpool’s homeless community, and was often seen outside Wilko on Dickson Road.

She had recently moved into her own flat, but returned to the streets to be near her friends following a burglary in December.

Sue said: “She was her own little character. She got into drugs when she was about 20 and went downhill, and that’s how she got that way, living on the streets, which was hard for her. But then in November she turned her life around. She stopped taking drugs. She got her own little flat and she was proud of it.

“Then just before Christmas she got broken into and it sent her back on the streets because she was scared to go back. She wanted to be with all her friends.

“I ask myself why did she go through town that night? Why didn’t she go straight home? Why did she go that way? I keep asking myself over and over questions that only she could know.

“She will not half be missed. When the police went around all the shops asking about her, they came back and said I wouldn’t believe just how much she was loved.

“A girl came up to me and said Linda was like a mum to her. She pointed to the pier and said she was going to jump off, and Linda talked her down.”

In her younger days, Linda worked at the Pleasure Beach.

Mark Butcher, founder of the Amazing Graze Soup Kitchen, said: “I knew Linda for 30 years, and she used to be a fun-loving party girl, a free spirited young woman. She was all about the rave scene in the early 1990s. She loved going to Glastonbury and she loved letting her hair down.

“But I didn’t see her for many years. When I saw her again, it was around 2014 and we were serving at the soup kitchen. A lot of people liked her. But she was a bit lonely in her flat on her own, and so she would often head back to the town centre where he friends were. She enjoyed the social scene that she had on Dickson Road.

“She was well known by the public, who would bring her food and whatever she needed.

“Up until the very end, we never did anything but love her. She had such a wonderful Christmas with us and never caused any problems for us.”

Chris Conway, of homeless outreach group United Blackpool, said: “She was an absolute character. She was always out on Dickson Road with her little trolley. Of course she had her up days and her down days, but you could always have a laugh with her. She will be missed by us all.

“It was extremely windy that night, and she was only a little lady. But she was one of those women you expect to live forever. She was out there in all weathers. She seemed indestructible.”

Linda leaves behind her mum, sisters Sonia and Justine, and brothers Barry, Craig and Chick. Her funeral will take place at a date to be arranged.

The North West Ambulance Service said: “We got a call at 4.20am on Sunday to Victoria Street near Specsavers. We were called to a female patient, believed to be in her 40s, who had been found on the floor.

“We took an ambulance and rapid response vehicle to the scene and we took her to Blackpool Victoria Hospital.”