Banker killed by a shard of glass as he fell through Thai hotel doors
A BANKER who quit his job to ‘see the world’ died in a freak accident when he fell through a glass door at a Thai hotel and punctured his abdomen.
Luke Goodere, 33, may have tripped over his suitcase, an inquest heard.
The business graduate received a fatal stab wound from a shard of glass after stumbling into the balcony doors.
He had been visiting friends on Phi Phi island after a first visit to see family in the UK in two-and-a-half years. He was set to continue on to Sydney, where he lived with his girlfriend Kelly.
The inquest heard how Mr Goodere had been to a festival with his friends before the tragic accident on April 11. He was last seen asleep at 4am by a friend, four hours before his body was discovered.
It is believed Mr Goodere may have got out of bed to use the toilet, tripped over his suitcase and fallen through the glass door on to the balcony.
Coroner’s officer Charlotte Alexander said in a report: ‘His suitcase was between the bed and the door, so potentially he had tripped.’
Thai police revealed that Mr Goodere suffered a fatal abdominal injury from a shard of broken glass, the hearing in Lincoln was told.
A post mortem confirmed the cause of death as being abdominal haemorrhage.
Lincolnshire coroner Paul Smith concluded that Mr Goodere died as a consequence of an accident. He said: ‘The best evidence is that he was socialising at a festival.
‘He had consumed some alcohol and he and his friends returned to his accommodation. He may or may not have had too much alcohol in his system – I make no findings in relainvestigation tion to that. He was seen fast asleep at 4am and the authorities were alerted four hours later at 8am.
‘During the course of the night he got up from the bed and suffered an accidental fall and injury that led to his death.’ He added: ‘The information is somewhat sparse. The police appears to have excluded the possibility of third party involvement.’
He stressed there was ‘no suggestion that any criminal act was suspected or investigated’.
Mr Goodere, the son of a policeman, was raised in Skegness, Lincolnshire, with his two sisters. He went on to study business management at the University of East Anglia, before joining the Royal Bank of Scotland in Norwich.
In a tribute in the Mail’s Extraordinary Lives column last week, his father, Clive, told how Mr Goodere soon decided ‘a job behind a desk was not for him – he wanted to see the world’.
The grieving father, 60, said: ‘He travelled throughout Asia, Australia and New Zealand, where he made friends from all over the world.
‘Luke lived life to the full, going sky-diving, river rafting, caving, ice climbing, horse riding, surfing, cage diving with sharks and bungee jumping. His main love was scuba diving and he qualified as a dive master.’
He added: ‘On his travels, Luke had a number of jobs, including managing a night club, running pool parties, working on the new children’s hospital in Perth and on an almond farm and constructing a motorway tunnel in Sydney.
‘I once said, “Luke, when are you going to get a proper job?” He replied, “Dad, when are you going to get a life?”
‘Years ago, when asked what he would do if he had a week to live, Luke said he would go home to see his family and visit friends in Phi – exactly what he did.’
‘Tripped over his suitcase’