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SUICIDE

Student jumps to death from university building

A 21-year-old student killed himself on Monday morning after jumping from a building at the University of Padua in the northern Italian region of Veneto.

Published: 14 April 2014 13:55 CEST
Student jumps to death from university building
A 21-year-old student died after jumping from a building at the University of Padua. Photo: Snoopsmaus/Flickr

The physics student, from Vicenza, fell seven floors from the stairwell of a building that houses the university’s new mathematics faculty, the Veneto edition of Corriere reported.

The incident happened at about 7.30am on Monday, shortly before the opening of the new faculty.

Police have found a suicide note, the newspaper reported.

Italy’s suicide rate has risen in recent years as the country became mired in its most severe post-war recession, with 119 people taking their own lives between January and October 2013 – a 40 percent increase on the same period in 2012, according to a study in November by LinkLab, the centre of socio-economic research at Link Campus University in Rome.

Though the study found that those who committed suicide were mostly businessmen, because of “spiralling debts” and “sudden loss of employment”, cases of young people killing themselves are becoming more common.

In March, a teenage girl from the Sicilian province of Trapani took her own life after learning how to load a gun on the internet.

READ MORE HERE: Suicide teen 'used web to load father's gun'

Most of the suicide cases in 2013 were among people from northern Italy, in particular the traditionally wealthier region of Veneto, the LinkLab study found. 

READ MORE HERE: Are Italians too proud to be depressed?

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NORWAY

Body found in Oslo flat nine years after death

A man lay dead in his flat for nine years before being discovered in December, police in Oslo have said.

Published: 9 April 2021 11:20 CEST
Body found in Oslo flat nine years after death
Photo by pichet wong from Pexels

The man, who was in his sixties, had been married more than once and also had children, national broadcaster NRK reports.

His name has been kept anonymous. According to neighbours he liked to keep to himself and when they didn’t see him, they thought he had moved or been taken to assisted living.

“Based on the details we have, it is obviously a person who has chosen to have little contact with others,” Grethe Lien Metild, chief of Oslo Police District, told NRK.

His body was discovered when a caretaker for the building he was living in requested police open the apartment so he could carry out his work.

“We have thought it about a lot, my colleagues and people who have worked with this for many years. This is a special case, and it makes us ask questions about how it could happen,” Metild said.

Police believe the man died in April 2011, based on a carton of milk and a letter that were found in his apartment. An autopsy has shown he died of natural causes.

READ ALSO: Immigrants in Norway more likely to be affected by loneliness

His pension was suspended in 2018 when the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) could not get in touch with him, but his bills were still paid out of his bank account and suspended pension fund.

Arne Krokan, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said the man’s death would have unlikely gone unnoticed for so long if he had died 30 years ago.

“In a way, it is the price we have paid to get digital services,” he said to NRK.

Last year 27 people were found in Oslo, Asker or Bærum seven days or more after dying. The year before the number was 32 people. Of these, one was dead for almost seven months before being discovered.

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