British diplomat who fell to his death from Romanian hotel ‘left a note saying he was depressed about not starting a family’

Ian Saunders, 47, fell from the top floor of a hotel in Baia Mare



The British national had been working as diplomat since 2001

Had been working as a regional attache to Bucharest embassy



Local media reports that he committed suicide in bout of depression



Briton posted pictures of record breaking skydiver on Facebook

Embassy is aware of reports but can neither confirm nor deny



The British diplomat who fell to his death from the top floor of a Romanian hotel left a note saying that he was depressed about not starting a family, it was claimed yesterday.



The diplomat has been identified as Ian Saunders, 47, who was working as a regional attache to the British Embassy in Bucharest.



Saunders killed himself during a bout with depression, sources close the investigation told the Actualmm.com news service in Romania.



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Ian Saunders, 47, a British diplomat working from the UK embassy in Romania, died after falling from the top floor of the Mara Hotel in Baia Mare, Romania

The diplomat is reported to have 'balanced on a rail', before jumping from the top floor balcony of the Mara Hotel

Saunders checked in to the Hotel Mara in Baia Mare on January 14 at 10pm, and asked hotel staff to give him a room on the top floor, according to local news reports.



He was due to leave on Thursday, but instead asked to extend his stay by another day.



Reports say that onlookers saw him balanced a railing outside his hotel room, and that after they called emergency services, he jumped from the seventh floor balcony.



Emergency services arrived at the scene and attempted to resuscitate him, but they were unsuccessful.



In a statement, a spokesman from the embassy said: 'We are aware of the information that appeared in the media. At this point we can not confirm or deny that information.'

Ian Saunders began his career as a diplomat in 2001, and since 8 January 2010 worked as a regional attache to the British Embassy in Bucharest.

Saunders had taken trips to places in and around eastern Europe, posting holiday pictures on Facebook of him visiting Hungarian cities like Budapest and Esztergom.



Saunders previously set his profile picture to one of skydiver Felix Baumgartner, who broke the world record for highest parachute jump after falling 39 kilometers, during his world record attempt.



Other pictures, like one from September 2012, showed him swimming with penguins in the ocean, while another showed he was at the Sziget festival, one of the largest music festivals in eastern Europe, in 2011.



The Mara Hotel is a three star hotel in the city of Baja Mare in Romania, over seven hours drive from Bucharest, where Saunders was working as an attache to the British Embassy

The reports began yesterday when Realitatea TV broadcast that a diplomat at the British embassy had he jumped from the seventh floor of the Mara Hotel, showing images of a body in a white sheet being put into a vehicle.

Videos showed police swarming outside of the hotel to cordon off the area, covering the body in a white sheet to shield it from the public's view.

Realitatea TV then broadcast footage of the body being lifted up from the pavement, carried to a van, and placed in the back of it.



The British foreign office commented on the TV footage, saying: 'We are aware of reports and looking into them.'

Police spokeswoman Dumitrita Rus said at the time that an investigation was underway, but she declined to provide further information





