Shortly after telling doctors he “wanted to be euthanized,” a university student left the hospital and leapt to his death in front of a Piccadilly Line train, according to evidence presented at the inquest.
After consuming a mixture of alcohol and narcotics, Alexander Corda-Stanley, 20, was discovered drunk on the sidewalk in front of an off-licence. He was then sent to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
He informed responders he was “very upset that euthanasia is illegal in the UK” and freely articulated his opinions about dying throughout the ambulance trip to the hospital. Hospital staff, however, maintain that they were not informed of his remarks.
The business and finance student at Oxford Brookes University had struggled with anxiety for years, and when lessons shifted online during the epidemic, his academic prospects took a severe hit.
Before receiving a thorough medical examination, he left the hospital. On July 4, 2021, at 11:15 p.m., he was captured on camera entering a Tube station and committing suicide. He was still wearing his hospital bracelet at the time.
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.
The Westminster coroner’s court heard that Mr Corda-Stanley, a Battersea resident, had been using drugs and alcohol as a kind of self-medication for his anxieties. He had also failed all but one of his university modules in his second year when lectures were transferred online during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He had admitted to self-harming in the past due to mental health issues, and he had been hospitalised in December 2020 after abusing narcotics and alcohol.
He’d told a mental doctor three days before his death that he wanted to stop using narcotics and that, “having failed his exams, he wanted to get his life back on track,” the court was informed.
The inquest heard London Ambulance Service paramedics were called to an off-licence where Mr Corda-Stanley was “agitated, upset, and unsteady on his feet”, after concerns from the shopkeeper.
He was groggy, acknowledged using alcohol and medicine, and informed the paramedics on the ambulance journey to the hospital that “I want to be euthanized” and that he “was very upset that euthanasia is illegal in the UK.”
According to the coroner, it is “unclear” if medical staff members were informed of his remarks, which suggested suicidal thoughts.
The news of this young man struck me as being quite sad. I don’t care what anyone thinks; so many people had severe emotional suffering as a result of these lockdowns. What have we done to our young people, this is so sad.
Although this is a heartbreaking incident, we should also remember the tube driver and the staff members who had to cope with the fallout.
This happens quite a lot, all thanks to the pandemic lockdown, cutting people off from each other and then loneliness and depression set in and was too much to handle, and this is so heartbreaking to keep hearing of all the young people who don’t want to live anymore, so tragic and hopefully he is at rest now.
People were handled horribly during lockdown and young people in especially. I’m confident that the full depth of the harm will become apparent over time.
Because of COVID-19, support was unavailable at the time, and it is now too late.
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