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Alcohol played a significant part in the death of a New Zealand student who fell from a hotel window in London while sleepwalking, a coroner has found.
Dr Paul Knapman of the Westminster Coroner's Court has recorded a verdict of death by misadventure following the incident last September when Howick College student Ross Kimpton fell about 30 metres.
The 17-year-old had just arrived in London at the start of a school rugby tour of the United Kingdom. During the night he plunged from a fourth-storey window of the London Lodge Hotel in Paddington.
The court heard that alcohol, along with jetlag and being in a foreign country, had put the teenager at risk of sleepwalking because he had suffered from it as a child.
A post-mortem examination found that Ross had a blood alcohol level of 179mg per 100ml of blood.
The adult driver's legal limit in New Zealand is 80mg and the limit for teen motorists is 30mg.
"I am satisfied there was no culture of drinking or drunken partying that night, but it is fanciful to pose that a blood alcohol of 179 has not played a significant part," Dr Knapman said.
Brett Rossoman, the teacher in charge of the tour, had told the inquest how he raced out of the hotel after hearing a thud and found Ross lying dead on the ground around 1.15am.
Earlier that evening, Mr Rossoman had found up to 16 boys, aged between 15 and 18, from the party of 25 sitting in Ross's room, which slept six.
He had caught three of them drinking beer, breaking the rules of the tour and the hotel. "I saw four cans of beer, one on a wardrobe and three others in the hands of boys.
"Straight away I gave them a warning. I dealt with them quite severely and told them to go to bed. It is my belief that they went to sleep after that."
Photos of the room showed a bin full of empty beer cans.
Ross's father, Murray Kimpton, said in a statement read to the inquest that his son used to sleepwalk when he was younger, but thought he had grown out of it.
A sleep expert told the court it was "very likely" that the death was down to an episode of sleepwalking.
Dr Irshaad Ebrahim, a consultant working at the London Sleep Centre in Harley St, gave evidence that alcohol was a priming factor for sleepwalking, as well as the fact Ross was in a strange environment.
Dr Tony Fernando, a New Zealand sleep disorder expert, told the Herald that he agreed alcohol could make the condition worse, especially if the person was sleep-deprived through jetlag.
Dr Fernando, who teaches sleep medicine at Auckland University's medical school, said it was thought sleepwalking affected between 6 and 9 per cent of the population.
