Mother seeks second inquest into son's death after online challenge fears

Ellen Roome has been given permission to apply to the High Court for a second inquest into her son Jools Sweeney’s death, as she presses for access to evidence she believes could change the picture of how he died. Roome, from Cheltenham, thinks the 14-year-old’s death in April 2022 was linked to an online challenge that went wrong.

A coroner previously concluded that Jools had taken his own life. Roome has spent years trying to establish why he died and says she is "hopeful" that data from his phone, which has been retained by police, may provide answers.

The family says crucial digital evidence was never gathered at the time. In particular, they say Jools’s social media data was never requested or reviewed by police or the coroner’s office, leaving unanswered questions about what he was seeing and doing online in the run-up to his death.

Roome’s campaign has grown into Jools’ Law, a proposal to automatically preserve a child’s online and social media data within five days of death. The argument at the heart of the campaign is straightforward: if digital records can disappear quickly, investigators may lose evidence before they know to look for it.

That push has fed into a wider debate over online safety, data disclosure and the limits of current reforms. Roome has argued that a proposed data protection bill giving coroners access to children’s social media accounts does not go far enough, because it would still leave too much to chance when families need answers most.

The case has become a test of whether coroners, police and platforms are equipped to handle suspected online-challenge deaths in the digital age. For Roome, the aim remains to uncover what happened to Jools and to secure rules that would stop other families facing the same gap in accountability.