London Evening Standard/London
A schoolboy blasted himself in the head with a shotgun because he was worried about getting into trouble over sexual text messages he sent to a girl, an inquest heard.
Charlie Booth, 16, killed himself with the weapon given to him as a birthday present hours after police visited his home following a complaint about the messages.
The year-11 pupil at £10,000-a-year Gad’s Hill School, based at the former home of Charles Dickens in Higham, Kent, was found dead by his parents Julia, 48, and Nicholas, 52, at their farmhouse on March 8 this year.
Hours before his death, police were called to the family’s £500,000 home in Cobham to reports of text messages of a sexual nature being sent to a girl, the inquest at Gravesend’s Old Town Hall heard.
Detective sergeant Lee Neiles, of Kent Police, told the inquest: “She wanted them to stop. Nicholas gave him words of advice and they went to KFC in Valley Drive in Gravesend and Nicholas said he (Charlie) had to be careful about contacting young girls. They had a KFC but Charlie seemed withdrawn.”
They returned home and Charlie went to his bedroom.
Around 10pm his mother Julia, a marketing assistant at nearby Cobham Hall boarding school, came back from an evening with her friends in Bluewater shopping centre to hear about the complaints made against her son. She told him off and confiscated his mobile phone. About 30 minutes later, while the Booths were downstairs they heard a loud bang.
Neiles said: “They went to his bedroom and Julia saw a light coming from the spare room and found him on the floor in the corridor. She said she saw him on his side and he was clearly dead.”
Kent Police and South East Coast Ambulance were called at 10.32pm.
The teenager, a shooting champion and a member of his school’s combined cadet force, had been due to go on a trip to Alaska in July and had raised £3,000 by organising quiz nights and working.
Neiles described him as a “typical country boy” who never drank, “apart from the occasional cider with his dad” and was trusted to handle weapons.
He said: “Everybody chipped in to buy him the gun and he was over the moon. He was totally responsible and was trusted by people to handle a gun. He had everything to live for.”
Passing verdict, North Kent Coroner Roger Hatch said: “I have no alternative to record other than Charlie Booth took his own life. I express my sympathies to the family.”