London - A former public schoolboy fell to his death after climbing a crane high on drugs and drink after a university ball, an inquest heard yesterday.
Charles Bartlett, 19, was still dressed in his dinner suit when he left the black-tie event at a luxury hotel to scale a building site in central Manchester.
The first-year student in computer science at Manchester University then lost his footing and plunged to his death on a platform below in the early hours of May 7 last year.
Police launched a missing person’s hunt after Mr Bartlett failed to return to his student digs, but his body was found the next day, a Monday, by a construction worker at the former BBC studios site.
Tests showed he would have been the equivalent of three times the drink-drive limit. The teenager had also taken cocaine and the horse tranquilliser ketamine, which is often used as a party drug.
Mr Bartlett, described as a fearless and adventurous climber by his family, was educated at the £21 600-a-year (R383 871) King’s College School in Wimbledon, south-west London. At school, he had been captain of his house rugby team and had ambitions to work in cyber-security at GCHQ.
His father David, an electrical engineer, runs a flight navigation business and his grandfather, Ricky Bartlett, played rugby for England.
The inquest heard the student would regularly smoke cannabis and take cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine and another tranquilliser, Xanax, which it is believed he acquired through the ‘dark web’ of online drug dealing.
He had been asked to leave his student halls over his drug use and his parents had spoken to him about it, but he carried on regardless.
CCTV footage from the construction site shows Mr Bartlett climbing the tower crane at 1.48am, before the platform started to shake.
Mr Bartlett’s best friend Sylvie Copley told the Manchester hearing that he had seemed ‘upset’ the week before his death after an argument on the phone with his mother about a delivery of drugs to the house. She said: ‘He was nervous to return home to potentially receive a telling off.’
Mr Bartlett attended the Owens Park Ball at the four-star Principal Hotel on the night of his death, where Miss Copley said he had ‘been completely lively and just normal’.
She added: ‘Charlie was drinking wine and had also taken ketamine.’
Miss Copley said Mr Bartlett had previously climbed the porch of their student halls but did not think he would ever take too many risks.
She believes Mr Bartlett saw the crane on his way home and ‘thought it would be really fun to climb’.
His uncle, Harry Bartlett, said his ‘special’ nephew was an ‘adventurous and a frequent climber’, who was ‘always looking out for others’.
Recording a verdict of accidental death, assistant coroner Zak Golombek said he did not have any evidence to prove the drugs and alcohol had caused Mr Bartlett to fall. He added: ‘This is a tragic death of someone who has died in an accident doing something he enjoyed.’