Helpless and slumped on the f loor, last photos of student on fatal booze binge initiation
LYING slumped on the ground, too drunk to stand, helpless ed Farmer is surrounded by friends at a metro station during the notorious student initiation bar crawl which ended his life.
eventually he is dragged to his feet and carried onto a train after downing around 27 vodka shots, CCTV footage shows.
Mr Farmer was brought back to a student house and taken to hospital hours later where he died following a cardiac arrest. The tragic student’s grieving family agreed that the footage should be released as a coroner ruled in a narrative verdict that he died from the ‘toxic effects’ of drinking excessive alcohol.
Mr Farmer’s friend edward Hinch described to the inquest his condition when he was carried onto the train, saying: ‘He was properly f****d. He was like terrified. He was trying to run away.’
Another friend said: ‘The first years around him picked him up and ushered him inside the metro station. on the metro he was sat down and he was already passed out from alcohol consumption’.
Mr Farmer, a first year student at New- castle University, was later put in a car as he was unable to walk and acting as a ‘dead weight’, the Newcastle inquest was told. during the Agricultural Society initiation a round of ‘at least 100 triple vodkas’ was ordered at one bar, and rituals included drinking vodka out of a pig’s head and apple bobbing in urine.
Coroner karen dilks yesterday called for all universities to give students compulsory training on the fatal dangers of binge drinking and initiations so ‘ no other family has to endure what the Farmer family have endured’.
Mr Farmer’s father Jeremy, from Leicester, said: ‘We have been left utterly underwhelmed and frustrated by the activity of Newcastle University and its student union to want to get to the heart of the problem of student initiations.
‘ed’s is not the first utterly needless and wasteful death to come about through this potentially fatal practice. We heard how initiations have been ongoing at Newcastle University for possibly 30 to 40 years despite such events being banned by both the university and the student union.’
He added: ‘ We can only hope that lessons will be learned but it is devastating it has been at such a cost. We urge that those who can effect change to do so in honour of ed’s memory and do so now.’
Yesterday economics student Mr Farmer’s mother Helen wept in court as Mrs dilks said she would be writing to Newcastle University and Universities Uk.
The coroner said: ‘I think there should be induction for all first year students and that should provide an unequivocal warning that consuming large quantities of alcohol can lead to death. There should be education of first year students on the correlation between initiations and a heightened risk of death.’ Mrs dilks also said she would write to the departments of education and Health asking them ‘to engage in some hard-hitting education and campaigning nationally to target students and ensure that we’re not in this position again’.
Mr Farmer – a former pupil at £31,000-a-year oakham School in rutland – died after attending the initiation bar crawl on december 12, 2016. during the evening, he was ordered to sit in silence and encouraged to drink around 27 shots of vodka in an hour by second and third year students. Between bars the group of around 20 first years were lined up in alleyways and told to glug from bottles of spirits and eat raw eggs, dog food, chicken feet and horseradish sauce. By the time the bar crawl finished two hours later, Mr Farmer was ‘terrified’ and unable to walk unaided.
He was left passed out in a hallway of a house belonging to second year organiser James Carr, where a group of third year students shaved his head.
As he lay unconscious, other first years were made to crawl through sheep pens to a garage where they had their heads shaved and drank from a pig’s head while being ‘egged on’ by older students who were wearing masks.
When Mr Farmer was taken to hospital at 5am the next day, he was five times over the drink-drive limit, soaking wet and covered in soil. He died the next day with his parents by his side. The inquest heard that he had been so nervous about taking the initiation ceremony he was ‘physically shaking’ at the beginning of the evening.
‘Utterly needless and wasteful death’