Skins contributor fell off roof after drug cocktail

A MUSICIAN from North Somerset who featured in the hit teen drama Skins died when he fell off a roof after a drug-fuelled session of 'student high jinks'.

Max Preece plummeted 30ft from a student house in Bristol after taking cocaine and ecstasy in a night out that lasted until late the next morning, Flax Bourton Coroners Court was told.

The 21-year-old's promising career, which had seen him contribute to the first two series of the Channel 4 show, was cut short when he sustained head and spinal injuries in Richmond Road at about 11am on May 31 last year.

Disaster struck when he fell after leaving a group of sunbathers to climb back inside the property with resident David Slater.

In a statement read to the court by a clerk, Mr Slater said: "He was going so fast he had fallen before I realised what was happening.

"I heard a really loud noise and assumed it was the sound of him landing."

Mr Preece, of the Old Cider House, Brockley, died at 2.50am at the Bristol Royal Infirmary the next morning.

His tragic end came after celebrating his best friend Alex Whitton's birthday at a club called the Thekla, in The Grove and later at a party in a student house.

Mr Whitton's statement, read by a court clerk, said that the pair had taken two ecstasy tablets each at the club, before starting on cocaine.

He said: "What happened from then - all I can say is that we continued to have a good time and we continued to take cocaine, sniffing it from the back of our hands."

They went to a student party in Hotwells, where they continued to drink and take drugs, before heading to Richmond Road at about 6am.

Reverend Nigel Rawlinson, the consultant who dealt with Mr Preece, told the court the death was a 'tragedy of student high jinks'.

Rev Rawlinson paid tribute to Mr Preece's friends as well as Easyjet and Stansted employees for helping to ensure the student's parents were able to return from Spain to be at his bedside before he died.