WILMOT: SHADOW BOXER’S DEATH PLUNGE

A rapper fell to his death when he practiced his shadow boxing at an open window after taking cocaine, an inquest heard.

Shaka Wilmot, 39, began shouting and throwing jabs and crosses at a party with friends at his home in Notting Hill, west London.

He lost balance and plunged head first out of his window as his guests looked on, Westminster Coroner’s Court heard.

Just hours before Mr Wilmot had been showing a friend a video of his performance at the Notting Hill Carnival.

Patrick Adu-Yeboah told the court that the rapper had been drinking brandy and smoking cannabis for much of the night.

‘I watched a video with him, a homemade video of him at Carnival, doing music and interviewing people.

‘I smoked cannabis then fell asleep. When I woke up he hit the wall, swinging three times at the wall, throwing punches at thin air.

‘He lost balance and then went straight out the window’.

Mr Wilmot was found lifeless by paramedics outside his block of flats on Chesterton Road in Ladbroke Grove, west London, at around 3am on November 17, 2012.

He was rushed to the nearby St Mary’s Hospital but died from his head injuries.

‘Shaka did some jabbing motions and then took a swing and then another swing, he did the same motion about three times before going out the window’, Mr Adu-Yeboah added.

‘After he fell out the window I was sat in the chair holding my head thinking ‘Did I see what I just saw?’

‘I went to the window and looked down – when I looked down I couldn’t see his body.

‘I saw it further towards the trees’.

Nicola Phillip told the inquest that Mr Wilmot began shadow boxing twenty minutes after he snorted cocaine.

She added that when she tried to calm her friend down he pushed her away and caused her head to bang against a wall.

‘Everybody was drinking, Pat was smoking weed, and Shaka was snorting cocaine, a lot.

‘At first I didn’t see any change in him, about twenty minutes later everything just changed.

‘Shaka started shouting, banging and slapping the wall.

‘I tried to hug him and he threw me into a chair – it all happened in the space of two minutes.

‘He kept shouting: ‘Honour, honour’. He looked at me like he didn’t even know who I was’.

Although police initially treated the death as suspicious, Detective Inspector David Reid told the inquest that there is no evidence of any ‘third party involvement’ in Mr Wilmot’s fall.

Dr Peter Jerreat, who carried out the postmortem of Mr Wilmot, said that there were no grip marks on the rapper’s body which would have indicated that he had been forcibly thrown out of his flat window.

Verdict: Accidental death.