‘Bubbly’ British student died after hitting head falling into Mexico swimming pool

'He saw only the good in everyone.'

A young British man who was visiting a friend in Mexico died after falling into a hotel swimming pool, an inquest heard.

Charlie Hopkins, 23, died of a fractured skull when he plunged into the pool wearing just his underpants in Tulum, Quintana Roo, on April 9 2021.

With no one else in the pool, it was long a mystery how the University of London (UCL) history student from Buckley, Wales, died, the inquest in Ruthin heard.

CCTV footage showed Charlie walking on a balcony through the two-storey Hotel Turquoise Petit’s reception area at around 1am.

The hotel was empty at the time, and ‘very soon afterwards’, a surveillance camera captured the water in the pool being disturbed.

Five hours later, a hotel guest discovered the body of Charlie at the bottom of the pool.

Charlie checked in to the hotel the day before after being invited there by his friend, Alex.

Charlie was a ‘bubbly’ man always the ‘light and soul of every room he was in’, his father Mark said in a statement read at the inquest.

‘He was a lively, loving, trusting young man. He saw only the good in everyone,’ he said.

‘Charlie would always finish talking to someone and say, “I love that person” – that’s just the sort of person he was.’

As much as he loved life in London, months of living in lockdown left Charlie itching for a holiday, the hearing was told.

A keen LGBTQ+ advocate and musician, Charlie phoned his parents almost every day when he first landed in Mexico, Mark said.

‘We became concerned when we didn’t hear from him for 24 hours,’ Mark said.

But on April 9, the Hopkins family received the ‘devastating’ phone call that their son was dead.

Home Office pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers said Charlie died of ‘a blunt force head injury and drowning, consistent with a fall from height’.

There were initially worries that Charlie had been assaulted, John Gittins, senior coroner for North Wales East and Central, said.

But the coroner said he had likely hit his head when entering the pool, adding: ‘There is absolutely no reason to give consideration to it being a deliberate act.’

He recorded a conclusion of accidental death.

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