Rugby star died after sleepwalking out of fourth floor window

A teenage rugby star sleepwalked to his death through a London hotel window 50ft above the ground after a late-night drinking session, an inquest heard.

Ross Kimpton, 17, had just begun a tour of the UK with his New Zealand school team when he plunged four storeys from the Paddington hotel.

He and his friends had been secretly drinking in the hours before his death and he was twice over the drinkdrive limit, the hearing was told.

Alcohol, jetlag and disorientation all increased the risk of Ross sleepwalking, a condition he had suffered from as a child, Westminster Coroner's Court heard.

A teacher told how he raced out of The London Lodge hotel after hearing a thud and found his "favourite student" lying in a pool of blood at around 1.15am.

Brett Rossoman, who was in charge of last September's tour, said earlier that Friday evening he had given the 25 boys £10 each to buy dinner and told them not to drink alcohol.

Later he found 16 of the boys, aged 15 to 18, in Ross's six-bed room. Three had cans of beer in their hands, breaking the rules of the tour and the hotel.

He said: "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 taken after the tragedy showed a bin in the room full of empty beer cans.

Mr Rossoman said: "Ross was one of my favourite students. I knew him very well. From what I hear he was not naive as far as alcohol is involved. He used to drink socially."

Recalling how he found the body, he said: "Two of us ran outside. We found him face down. I took a pulse on his wrist and his neck, but I could not find a pulse. There was no breathing."

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Ross's parents, Murray and Theresa, flew to London from their Auckland home to hear coroner Dr Paul Knapman record a verdict of death by misadventure.

Mr Kimpton said: "There is no doubt Ross was happy and pleased to be going on the trip. He had been talking about it a great deal for months."

He thought Ross had grown out of sleepwalking.

A post-mortem examination found Ross's skull had been fractured in three places, but the cause of death was aspiration of gastric contents due to head injury. A sleep expert told the court that it was "very likely" that the death was down to a tragic episode of sleep-walking.

Dr Irshaad Ebrahim, a consultant at the London Sleep Centre in Harley Street, said: "Alcohol is a priming factor for sleepwalking. If there is a precipitating event, something such as a loud bang, someone snoring in the room that disturbs someone in deep sleep, that could precipitate a sleepwalking episode. The window was open and there could have been a loud noise coming from outside.

"He was in a strange environment, in a different bed in one of the busiest cities in the world. These are factors in sleepwalking."

Police ruled out murder or suicide and did not believe Ross had climbed out of the window as a prank while drunk, the inquest heard.