Man Kills Self With Broken Bottle: No Alcohol Involved
Summary:
Paragraph five reads: "No alcohol was found in his body. There were traces of anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants but not enough to have led to an overdose."
A SUICIDALLY depressed man killed himself by plunging a broken bottle into his neck at a Worcester hostel.
John Scarrett was found dead in his room at the YMCA in Henwick Road, St John’s, Worcester, where he bled to death, an inquest in Stourport was told.
The 59-year-old’s body was discovered by support worker Dean Spires on May 9 who knocked two or three times without reply before opening his door. In a statement he said: “I could see he was on the bed and he was very pale. He was lying diagonally across the bed, his legs over the side of the bed and his feet on the floor and a bottle in his right hand which was smashed.”
He suffered an 8cm by 4.6cm gash to his neck. The cause of death was given as “shock and haemorrhage” caused by a laceration to the left side of his neck which had severed the jugular vein.
No alcohol was found in his body. There were traces of anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants but not enough to have led to an overdose.
Christine Roe, a development worker at the YMCA, described Mr Scarrett as “a quiet, introverted man, nervous around people he didn’t know” and said he had been “low in himself” before his death but “didn’t like to upset people”.
She said he was worried about his son and was admitted to hospital twice in the last two weeks of his life.
She said: “He was determined he wanted to die. He felt nobody could help him. He couldn’t cope with the demons that drove him to drink.”
Mr Scarrett, a divorced father and unemployed quality control worker for Rolls Royce, had been admitted previously as a voluntary patient to Newtown Hospital where he told staff he was hearing “the voice of God and people he had known from the past”.
No mental illness was diagnosed and he was assessed as at medium risk of suicide.
Worcestershire coroner Geraint Williams recorded a verdict that Mr Scarrett killed himself.