Job Discussion Forums

[NipponPoke]

TEACHER JUMPED FROM 21ST FLOOR OF HOTEL


09:00 - 29 August 2003

An English teacher tied an exercise machine to himself and jumped 160ft to his death after his wife left him, an inquest heard yesterday. Christopher Peers leapt from the 21st floor of a hotel with the device attached to his chest after he realised his Thai bride had left him for good. The 49-year-old had used a bed sheet to tie the 3ft steel walking machine to himself, which acted as a weight to quicken his fall.

A neighbour at the hotel complex in Thailand where Mr Peers lived saw him standing in the window and called the reception desk.

But Mr Peers, originally from Poole in Dorset, threw himself off the narrow ledge. He was killed instantly.

The hearing heard Mr Peers moved to Pattaya in Thailand after meeting his wife Prayong Seethabut, 28, five years earlier.

In a statement read to the inquest, Ms Seethabut said their marriage troubles began when her husband had started drinking after being involved in a car crash. She said: "I had lived with him for five years although our marriage was unregistered. After the crash he suffered nervous symptoms and was drinking a lot and when he drank we could not understand each other. I told him if he did not stop drinking I would leave him but he carried on.

"So on January 20 I packed my clothes and went to live somewhere else. The next I heard was on February 7 when staff at the hotel rang to tell me he was dead."

Electrician Phairoj Mueangkrim told investigating officers: "I ran to the lift but while I was waiting for it I heard a thud, like something had fallen. I got up to Mr Peers' room and he had already fallen and was lying on the roof deck of floor five."

Recording a suicide verdict at the Bournemouth inquest, East Dorset Coroner Mr Sheriff Payne said: "He took his own life. Tying himself to the exercise machine shows it was not a cry for help. The consequences of his actions were inevitable."