An inquest began this week into the death of Toby Rundle, an LMH student who was found hanged in his room last October.
The inquest heard that the night before his death, Rundle had been drinking at the college bar with some friends, before going to the Oxford nightclub, Escape. Upon returning to college, he went to the room of Clement Knox, a fellow LMH student and friend of Rundle’s, which he refused to leave. Knox told the inquest that Rundle was “being quite mischievous”, lying in his bed pretending to be asleep.
Knox explained that he dragged Rundle out of his room at about 2.30am, and that he was apologetic when he realised he had annoyed his friend. Knox found Rundle’s body later that afternoon, when other students became suspicious that they had not seen him that day.
Rundles’s father told Oxford Coroner’s Court that his son’s death had come “out of the blue”. The death occurred just a week before the conclusion of the inquest into the death of another LMH student, John Ddungu, who passed away in February 2009.
Mr. Rundle explained that he and his son had discussed the suicide of Ddungu, telling the inquest, “[Toby] said that having seen the damage to the other boy’s family, that was the last thing he would ever contemplate.”
A post-mortem showed that Rundle had over two-and-a-half times the legal alcohol driving limit in his blood stream and that he had died of asphyxiation. There were no traces of drugs found in his body.
Rundle, from Somerset, was in his final year at Oxford, reading English and Classics. He came to national attention in June 2007, when he sold a first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, for £7,200 at an auction. He used the money to pay his university fees.
The University counseling service has been offering extra support this year for LMH students.
