02/21/2002 "Student who died under train told family he was gay"

Student who died under train told family he was gay
- By Terri Judd (independant.co.uk)

A gifted Cambridge University student was killed under a Tube train hours after revealing his homosexuality to his parents, an inquest was told yesterday.

An argument erupted after Frederick Hodder, 21, made his announcement and he had left the family home in a "distressed state". His family did not learn until the next day that he had died after drinking the equivalent of a bottle of whisky.

The son of a management consultant, Mr Hodder had been sent to a junior school for the gifted, played the violin from the age of five, spoke Russian and was a keen skier. After leaving Westminster School, he spent a year completing foreign policy work on the post-Soviet economy at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC, before going on to read maths at Pembroke College.

Yesterday Police Inspector Anthony Lodge told Westminster coroner's court that Mr Hodder's parents, Roland and Monroe, had described their son as an essentially happy young man who had a tendency to "over-analyse".

On the afternoon before he died he had informed his parents that he was gay, the officer said. "That caused some family arguments during that afternoon. The son had been very depressed and showing strange behaviour, barricading himself in his room."

The Hodders saw their son standing outside the house when they returned to their Kensington home from a party. "He was in a distressed state. They called for him to come back, but he left the area," Inspector Lodge told the court.

The student died under a train at South Kensington London Underground station shortly before midnight on 29 December last year.

Hugo Pinto, the Tube driver, told the court he noticed Mr Hodder standing at one end of the platform, walking towards the edge. "He sat down on the platform with his legs hanging over. I was worried I would hit his legs. I started blowing the whistle and slammed on the emergency brake," Mr Pinto said, adding: "It was inevitable I would hit the person."

The next day, Mr Hodder's American parents learnt of his death from the US embassy.

Professor Sir Colin Berry told the inquest that Mr Hodder's blood alcohol level was 429mg per decilitre – five and a half times the drink-drive limit and equivalent to consuming a bottle of whisky. The pathologist explained this level of alcohol in itself could have proved fatal.

The cause of death was multiple head injuries, including a fractured skull.

In a letter to the coroner, Roland Hodder described his son's life as, "interesting and unusual". Born in San Francisco, he had lived in Japan for some years before moving to Kazakhstan at the age of 15 when his father took a job directing the economic assistance programme. He attended a Russian school before joining Westminster as a boarder.

Mr Hodder studied the violin, an instrument he played in California's Palo Alto youth orchestra, and learnt to ski from a young age. He enjoyed acting – an interest that he maintained at university – and obtained A levels in double maths, physics, Russian, and an AS level in music.

Recording an open verdict, Dr Paul Knapman, the coroner, said: "This is a person with such a high level of alcohol. Can it be truly said that, on the evidence, the deceased formulated the intention he should end his life that evening at the age of 21?

"I think the evidence is insufficient to say that is so beyond reasonable doubt."