Last updated 19:43, Thursday, 17 April 2008

A WORKINGTON man died in a shed after taking a lethal concoction of drugs.

An inquest on Tuesday heard that Gary Petre, 24, of Firth View Walk, died on December 6 in a garden shed on Bowness Court.

The inquest heard how he had spent the evening with a friend taking a number of drugs, including cocaine, and smoking cannabis.

His mother, Alice Messenger, said that he had been receiving help to him stop taking drugs and was visiting drugs charity Rising Sun Trust for counselling.

But towards the end of last year he started missing his sessions with his nurse.

Mr Petre went to Ashley Taylor’s house on Garnet Crescent on the day before his death.

Mr Taylor said: “He came to my house until 7.30pm. We shared a gram of coke and smoked pot.”

He said they went to a friend’s house and had another line of coke each. During the course of the night he took a number of tablets Mr Taylor described as ‘pinks’ and ‘blues.’

Mr Petre’s body was found the following morning in a shed belonging to Thomas Kenneth May, on Bowness Court.

He said in a statement, the day after Mr Petre was found, that the shed had been locked but the next morning he noticed a lawn mower had slipped out and thought it had become dislodged.

“I saw a blue anorak, when I lifted it I saw a back bone, he added.”

He said the body was face down and he phoned the police.

West and north Cumbria coroner John Taylor said: “We have heard from his girlfriend Joanne that she told Gary that he had to get back to the house by 10pm because she wanted to go to bed. He turned up late in the evening with Ashley. They stayed for some time and then left.

“Ashley gave evidence that he had been with Gary that evening. They had smoked pot and taken coke.

“It was about 4am when Gary left Ashley to return to Joanne’s home. He never arrived. He must have gone into the shed to sleep off the drugsDue to the amount of drugs he had consumed it led to complications and depressed his system.”

A consultant pathologist at the West Cumberland Hospital, Whitehaven, said the cause of death was poisoning caused by diazepam, an anti-depression drug amitriptyline, and a painkiller dihydrocodeine.

The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure.