Abstract. The reaction11 B + p has been used to populate the (J π , T ) = (2 + , 1) state at an excitation energy of 16.11 MeV in 12 C, and the breakup of the state into three α-particles has been studied in complete kinematics. A two-step breakup model which includes interference effects is found to provide the most accurate description of the experimental data. The branching ratio to the ground state of 8 Be is determined to be 5.1(5)% in agreement with previous findings, but more precise by a factor of two, while the decay to the first excited state in 8 Be is found to be dominated by d-wave emission.