I was killing a player in the wilderness and he put on prayer, ate to full, then closed his client. That itself is very annoying, but the bug came after that. In the 10 seconds while he was still logged in, I killed him. His character disconnected while he was at 0 hp and he was doing the death emote. No items appeared on the ground. I waited for the items to show up, but they didn't. I'm not sure what happened to the items or the player, but the disconnect should not prevent you from losing items. (I also think the disconnect should be longer than 10 seconds if you're in the wilderness, but that's another conversation)

I had this happen again. The player disconnected during the death emote. He logged back in a little later with about 30% health and all of his gear.