Hakima El Azouzi fell to her death from window

Published: 1 October, 2010
by JOSH LOEB

A YOUNG mother who died after falling from a fifth-floor apartment was “most likely the victim of a tragic accident”, an inquest has heard.

Hakima El Azouzi, 29, a Moroccan national of Manchester Street, Marylebone, had been on a night out with her flatmate and an acquaintance just hours before her death on January 4 this year.

The inquest at Westminster Coroner’s Court in Victoria on Wednesday heard how the ­mother of a six-year-old daughter had left the Ambassador Casino near Hyde Park in the early hours having consumed an amount of alcohol described as “two and a half times the legal limit for driving”.

She then travelled alone by taxi to a flat in Grosvenor Court, Sloane Street, where Karim Yousuf Nabih – her former boyfriend – was living.

Mr Nabih, 40, said he initially refused to let Ms El Azouzi into the building as he had guests staying with him but had eventually relented. Around an hour later, he said, he and Ms El Azouzi had gone into his bedroom, where she had locked the door and moved towards the window. As he looked for the key, she fell from the window.

The couple had been seeing each other for around 18 months but Mr Nabih said their relationship had been “in the process of cooling off”.

Detective Sergeant Gratton said those investigating the case had “found it difficult to explain how bottles resting on the ­windowsill did not appear to have fallen or been disturbed”.

DS Gratton said investigators had been unable to find fingerprints belonging to Ms Azouzi on the windowsill or on the wall outside. But he said they had found no evidence of foul play.

Questioned by coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe, Mr Nabih said that they saw each other “every day or every second day.”

However, he said they had been “taking a break” in the days before her death. He said he did not know what Ms El Azouzi did for money but believed she got regular payments from a family friend as well as from the father of her daughter.

Asked by one of Ms El Azouzi’s family why he had been unable to stop Hakima from falling, Mr Nabih said: “I have been asking myself that question for a long time. I did not know that she was going to climb up there and since she had decided to climb up there, there really was nothing I could do. There was panic. There was a certain element of panic. I can’t really describe it.”

Recording a verdict of accidental death, Dr Radcliffe said: “There are some outstanding questions that I accept the family may find it difficult to leave here without finding answers to. But more likely than not it was a tragic accident.”