I can’t do life any more: Philosophy student, 22, in desperate call to mum before leaping to her death from Manchester car park

A philosophy student leapt to her death from a city centre car park moments after telling her mum in a phone call: “I can’t do life any more. I love you. I’m sorry.”

Rachel Jardine, 22, was studying a master’ s degree at the University of Manchester when she plunged from the multi-storey car park in Bloom Street on May 18 this year.

Her mum, Annette Jardine, from Bristol, told an inquest she spoke to Rachel five times by phone the day she died.

The inquest heard Rachel had been anxious and upset after she and her boyfriend had split up.

In one call to her mum in the early hours she said: “I’m going to go into town and jump off a building.”

Mrs Jardine said: “I wanted to establish where she was and get someone to her. She was saying, ‘I’m not going to back out of this one. Life is too hard’. I said I know it will get better. She wasn’t going to back down.”

She added: “I rang her back once more. She said, ‘I can’t do life any more. I love you. I’m sorry.”

Two men standing outside a pub heard Rachel fall and tried to help her. Rachel, who lived in Rusholme, was pronounced dead at Manchester Royal Infirmary.

After her death it emerged that a thief had stolen her mobile phone as the men tried to help her at the scene. Ben Heney, 23, of Hulme, was jailed for 12 weeks in May this year after he admitted the theft.

Pathologist Dr Helen Denley said Rachel died from multiple injuries.

Det Con Kerry-Anne Featherstone said that there were no suspicious circumstances.

Rachel’s GP Archana Griffin said the student reported having palpitations and anxiety in January and was admitted to hospital. On another visit she said she had an argument with her boyfriend and did not want to live any more.

The doctor referred her to a mental health team. She was shocked when she learned she had died.

Rachel had taken it upon herself to see a psychotherapist called Janine Hurley, who said she was ‘significantly improved’ the last time she saw her.

Richard Barnard, consultant clinical psychologist at the Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, said the waiting list for referral was 16 weeks at the time but has been reduced to 12 weeks.

Coroner Nigel Meadows’ verdict was that Rachel took her own life. He said Mrs Jardine could have done no more to help her daughter.

He added: “It seems if you have to wait three months for a referral, it is simply too long.

“We will never know if it would have made a difference, but it may make a difference in another case. I’m going to write to the mental health trust to ask them to review their procedures.”

A spokesman for the mental health trust said: “It is important that we stress that the coroner made no link between the delay in referral and Ms Jardine’s sad death.”

He said that the work to cut waiting times was ongoing.