A university student walked out of hospital and jumped to his death in front of a Piccadilly Line train shortly after telling medics he “wanted to be euthanised”, an inquest has heard.
Alexander Corda-Stanley, 20, was admitted to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital after being found intoxicated on the pavement in front of an off-licence, having taking a cocktail of alcohol and drugs.
On the ambulance ride to hospital, he openly discussed his thoughts about death and told paramedics he was “very upset that euthanasia is illegal in the UK”. But hospital nurses insist they were not told about his comments.
The Oxford Brookes University business and finance student had battled with anxiety for years, and his academic prospects nose-dived in the pandemic when classes moved online.
He walked out of hospital before being fully medically examined, and was still wearing his hospital wristband when he was seen on CCTV entering a Tube station at 11.15pm on July 4, 2021 before taking his life.
Assistant coroner Sabina Khan recorded the death as suicide, and heard evidence of an overhaul of handovers from paramedics to hospital staff following Mr Corda-Stanley’s death to ensure key information is passed on.
Westminster coroner’s court heard Mr Corda-Stanley, who lived in Battersea, had been self-medicating for anxiety with alcohol and drugs, and failed all but one of his modules in the second year at university when classes moved online during Covid.
He had been hospitalised in December 2020 after drinking heavily and taking drugs, and had also admitted to self-harming in the past as he struggled with his mental health.
Three days before his death, he told a psychiatric consultant he wanted to quit drugs, and “having failed his exams he wanted to get his life back on track”, the court was told.
The inquest heard London Ambulance Service paramedics were called to an off-licence where Mr Corda-Stanley “agitated, upset, and unsteady on his feet”, after concerns from the shopkeeper.
He was drowsy, admitted taking medication and drinking, and on the ambulance ride to hospital he told paramedics “I want to be euthanised” and “was very upset that euthanasia is illegal in the UK”.
The coroner said it is “unclear” whether his words, indicating suicidal thoughts, were passed on to hospital staff.
The court heard Mr Corda-Stanley underwent routine preliminary checks at hospital, he was helped to charge his e-cigarette, and nurses refused his request for morphine.
Mr Corda-Stanley’s mother told the inquest she had spoken to a nurse over the phone and pleaded for him to be kept at the hospital until she arrived.
But Mr Corda-Stanley insisted he did not want to speak to his family, and he left without undergoing further medical or mental health assessments.
“It is unclear if his request to be euthanised was handed over to the hospital”, said the coroner. “Even if it was, it wasn’t clearly handed over, certainly not to an extent that the hospital team were made aware of such a serious request.”
She said the nurse in charge of Mr Corda-Stanley’s care had “done her utmost to persuade (him) to wait for his mother to collect him”.
Dr Sanjay Krishnamoorthy, the clinical director of urgent and emergency care at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, said a serious incident report had been compiled after Mr Corda-Stanley’s death.
He said the written handover report from the paramedics to hospital staff “wasn’t completed in a timely manner”, while there were “discrepancies” in accounts of the verbal handover.
He said a more detailed mental health assessment would have taken place if doctors had known about Mr Corda-Stanley’s suicidal thoughts, and improvements to the handover system have now been made so reports are finalised quickly to full inform a patient’s care.
