City trader's suicide leap from Hilton

Credit Suisse employee Darren Liddle, 26, spent the night bingeing on cocaine and also drank alcohol from the hotel's minibar before falling 200 feet while his girlfriend looked on.

A police officer had tried to talk him down after he was seen sitting on the window ledge outside his room sobbing and shaking at 8am. He had already cut his wrists.

Detective Constable Francis De Juan said: "Mr Liddle never answered or acknowledged him in any way. He was constantly staring downwards and occasionally looking back into the room. He never spoke."

At around 10.30am, shortly after a trained negotiator and Mr Liddle's girlfriend arrived, he was seen to step off the ledge and hit the mezzanine roof.

Weeks earlier Mr Liddle had been released from a psychiatric ward for the second time in two months, Westminster coroner's court heard.

Coroner's officer Terry Lovegrove, who interviewed Mr Liddle's family, said: "The pressures of work led him to abuse drink and drugs. It wasn't long before his parents realised drugs were taking over his life."

Mr Liddle, of Lewisham, was described as a "talented mathematician" who gained a first class degree in maths and business before winning a bursary to study for a masters degree at Imperial College.

He was taken on by Credit Suisse as an analyst and trader and got the company's best first-year trading results. But he became mentally ill and in July last year was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Dr Neil Campbell, a consultant psychiatrist at the Priory Hospital, said Mr Liddle had wanted to jump off a block of flats because he believed he was being chased by "vigilantes". Another time he tried to leap onto tracks at a Tube station.

Mr Liddle was given medication and released a fortnight later. But he was readmitted to the Priory in August - this time not under section - after again being talked down from a roof.

Mr Liddle's mother interrupted proceedings to ask why her son had not been sectioned. Deputy coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe sympathised, saying: "This is not an uncommon problem. We look back thinking if only we could have kept him safe. But it doesn't always work like that. You have to balance the rights of the patient."

The coroner ruled that Mr Liddle killed himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed.