Published: December 1, 2011
by TOM FOOT

DRUNKEN rooftop antics caused the death of a promising young photojournalist who fell four storeys to the ground, an inquest has heard.

Tom Swain, 22, had consumed a “large quantity of alcohol” on the night of his death in King’s Cross on August 13 earlier this year.

He died instantly from extensive multiple injuries after falling on to concrete paving from a flat in Gray’s Inn Road, St Pancras Coroner’s Court was told on Thursday.

Mr Swain, from Hertfordshire, had been playing cards and drinking games with two women and his friend Anton Malisheff at around 4am following a night out together in Shoreditch.

Mr Malisheff confronted his friend after he clambered out of a window on to a small terrace.

“It was not the sort of place people are expected to be out on,” Ms Greenaway told the court.

Mr Malisheff followed his friend out on to the ledge, which was littered with cigarette butts and empty beer cans, the court heard, and asked him: “What the fuck are you doing?”

Moments later Mr Swain fell, landing close to security guards from the nearby Scala nightclub. Attempts to resuscitate him by an emergency medical technician, hired by the nightclub to help with less serious drunken injuries, failed and he was pronounced dead after paramedics in a London Ambulance Service helicopter arrived.

In a statement read to court, Mr Malisheff said: “If I had been closer to him, I would have grabbed him. It was really wet and he had no shoes. For a split second, we made eye contact as he leaned back. He slipped. He fell.”

Mr Malisheff said Mr Swain “was an eight” on a drunken scale of one to 10.

Toxicology reports found that Mr Swain also had small traces of Class A drugs cocaine and MDMA in his bloodstream. He also had a “low concentration” of Levamisole, a cancer medication, which cocaine is often cut with, the inquest heard.

Coroner Suzanne Greenaway, recording a verdict of “accidental death”,  said: “This is a particularly tragic, tragic death. Parents worry constantly about this kind of scenario: young people who have had too much alcohol. It is a terrible waste of life.”

Mr Swain’s father, John, and his mother, brother and sister, were present in court.