Diana Shamash Wiki

                Diana Shamash Biography

Who was Diana Shamash?

Diana Shamash, 80, jumped into the water fully clothed to try to help property tycoon David, 82, at the couple’s vacation home near Montpellier.

But she was dragged under the weight of her clothes, police in southern France said.

The couple was discovered by friends who arrived for dinner at the secluded property last Saturday. It is feared they could have been in the pool for days, as they were last heard from on the previous Wednesday night.

The house is well away from the others so no one would have been able to hear her cries for help,” a senior investigative source told the Daily Mail.

“But what we now know is that Mrs. Shamash was fully clothed and had her shoes on when she jumped into the pool to save her husband after he suffered a suspected heart attack.

“Certainly she found it very difficult to float under these circumstances and she sank into the water.”

Detectives working on the case have pieced together what happened with the help of post-mortem examinations carried out on Thursday. “The timeline of events seems to rule out foul play. This was a very tragic accident,” the source said.

One line of inquiry is whether the pool was heated, as cold water is a notorious killer in hot weather. It has a deep bottom of more than 7 feet and a diving board.

The area is dotted with million-pound properties, many of them owned by Brits drawn by the Mediterranean climate.

Family

In recent years, the couple had invested their fortune in good deeds, creating the Covent Garden Group Foundation charity. It sets its goals as ‘poverty alleviation worldwide but with emphasis on South East Asia’ as well as ‘treatment and prevention of blindness’. The footage also shows Ms Shamash on assignment abroad with Action Against Hunger. Shamash, an Oxford graduate, ran his property empire with his son Anthony, 56, while her daughter Nicola, 58, lived near them in South Fawley.

The devastated children flew to France to identify the bodies of their parents this week.

Mr. and Mrs. Shamash also adored their five grandchildren. “They had a lot to live for,” said a friend. He was a big noise in London and he still worked from home. He was always in the garden. He had his own studio where he made picture frames. Both were as fit as the other. It is awful.

The couple were popular in South Fawley, where they gave away fruit from their trees, grapes and eggs from the eight hens they raised.

Animal lovers also kept an alpaca, nine sheep and three cats, while their gardens on the property worth an estimated £1.2m were said to be the envy of neighbours.