Ben Pawlowski
A BRITISH amateur football coach who was holidaying with friends in Benidorm died after a drunken fall from his second-floor hotel balcony, an inquiry has heard.
Lewis Cooper, a 28-year-old project manager from Basingstoke, Hampshire, died on September 22, 2023 after returning from a night out with pals when he plunged to his death.
Senior Hampshire coroner Christopher Wilkinson was told how Lewis had put a chair against the balcony railing and used it to step onto a seven-centimetre handrail before falling two floors.
He was revived at the scene but was pronounced dead the following day in hospital.
The coroner ruled out suicide, saying the Brit had ‘everything to live for’ including being a best man at an upcoming wedding.
Instead, he recorded a verdict of ‘death by misadventure’.
He said: “What can’t be explained is how or why he steps on the chair. There is no evidence that there were any difficulties in his life and I suspect that given the close friends and family he had he would have explained those to others. There is nothing that would indicate that Lewis took his own life”.
During the day prior to his death, Lewis had watched football before going on a bar crawl with friends.
He became separated from them and returned to Hotel Perla with a woman he had met at the pool earlier in the day.
20 minutes after she had left his room, Lewis fell from his balcony.
A statement from his family said: “Lewis had a big friendship group, all of his friends have said Lewis was the glue that held them together. He had an old head on his shoulders and was mature beyond his years. If someone was going to do something silly, it would never be Lewis”.
“He had everything to live for, he had started to write his best man speech and was due to start a second football coaching course. As his parents, all of us knew how amazing he was”.
