A 14-year-old German boy who fell from an eighth floor hotel room in Paceville early yesterday morning could have suffered a fit or sleepwalked to his death, investigators believe.

Police looking into the death of Johannes Werner Stenzel are not excluding this possibility as his friends who were in his same room at the La Vallette Resort were all asleep when the incident occurred at about 4.40 a.m.

The boy, who has been attending English language courses in Malta for the past two weeks, shared a room on the top floor of the Paceville three-star hotel. The police are not sure of the dynamics that led to his fall but foul play is being excluded.

Sources close to the investigation said witnesses heard the boy scream in the balcony before he plummeted to the ground.

The streets in Paceville were almost empty at the time of the incident since bars and clubs in Malta’s entertainment Mecca close at 4 a.m.

A team of paramedics who were called to the scene certified him dead. An autopsy is expected to be carried out today. Sources in Germany said the boy’s mother was taken ill when she was informed about her son’s tragic death. Members of his family are making arrangements to come over as soon as they can. The family lives in Langenhennersdorf, a small village close to Dresden.

A 15-year-old Russian girl here to study English, Kristina Yasinskaya, fell five storeys to her death last July as she was attempting to jump from her balcony to her friend’s room at a hotel in St Paul’s Bay. She landed on the pavement outside the Topaz Hotel in Triq iċ-Ċagħaq.

Later that month, a 36-year-old Finn fell off the balcony of his Hilton hotel room to the marina below and was critically injured.

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