Tragic death of University student on Alton Road not murder (Updated)

19th Nov 2009

A stu­dent from the Uni­ver­sity of Birm­ing­ham was found dead in his room on Fri­day 13th Novem­ber. The body of the sec­ond year law stu­dent was dis­cov­ered by his house­mate in his home on Alton Road just after 7pm with a sin­gle fatal knife wound. His par­ents were imme­di­ately noti­fied and fam­ily liai­son offi­cers have been work­ing with the fam­ily to sup­port them dur­ing this time.

Res­i­dents of Alton Road were alerted to the inci­dent on Fri­day evening when police closed the road and foren­sic teams were placed in the area. West Mid­lands police ini­tially described the death as ‘sus­pi­cious’, how­ever, inves­ti­ga­tions over the week­end ruled out the pos­si­bil­ity of mur­der and have stated that the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the 19-year old student’s death have yet to be deter­mined. Despite rumours that had been cir­cu­lat­ing, no per­sons were arrested and police are not look­ing for any­one in con­nec­tion with the incident.

A post mortem was car­ried out on Sat­ur­day in which the coro­ner con­firmed that the cause of death was a sin­gle fatal wound. It was also estab­lished that the injury was self-inflicted, how­ever, there is no evi­dence as yet to sug­gest how or why this came about. The time of death and fur­ther details will not be released into the pub­lic domain until after the inquest, which is due to take place in the next month.

Uni­ver­sity of Birm­ing­ham Cam­pus Liai­son Offi­cer P.C. Julie Roberts dis­pelled rumours once more by clar­i­fy­ing that the police are not seek­ing any­one in rela­tion to this iso­lated inci­dent and wanted to thank his house­mates, who had co-operated with the police fully, despite their obvi­ous dev­as­ta­tion at the news. P.C. Roberts described the stu­dent as ‘your every­day nor­mal guy’, and the grow­ing flo­ral trib­utes out­side the house demon­strate that he will be greatly missed.

Ed Sparkes, the Guild Offi­cer of hous­ing and com­mu­nity, stated: ‘As stu­dents we form a very close com­mu­nity and any loss can be dev­as­tat­ing to all of us. Our thoughts go out to his fam­ily and friends at this time and I’d like to remind every­one that, should you need it, the Guild will always be there to sup­port you through dif­fi­cult peri­ods such as these.’

If you have been affected by this inci­dent and want some sup­port, please con­tact the Guild.

Writ­ten by Natalie Vin­cent and Jes­sica Tarrant