SUICIDE VERDICT FOR MAN WHO MOURNED HIS FATHER

A MAN who increasingly took to drinking heavily to cope with personal issues and declining mental health because it helped him "shut everything off" was found dead in woods miles from home, an inquest heard.

- By OLIVIER VERGNAULT

Mark Rogers was discovered in Steeple Woods, near St Ives, by a holidaymaker as he went for a walk with his children. During the inquest, held in Truro earlier this week (May 19) into the 48-year-old's death, tourist Lee Hollingworth said he went back to the nearby Polmanter Farm Touring Park outside St Ives to take his children away from Mr Rogers' body. He then called the emergency services.

Police and the ambulance service attended the site on August 7 last year at around 6.30pm and Mr Rogers was declared deceased at the scene. His car was found parked nearby. A postmortem examination revealed he had consumed a large quantity of alcohol prior to his death, which, by comparison, would have put him at more than three times the UK legal drink drive limit.

Jemma Hackett, his partner at the time, told the hearing that the couple had been together on and off for 11 years and they lived together in Looe. In a statement read out in court she said Mr Rogers, who was born in Torbay and was originally from Dartmouth, had a poor mental health and had suffered from depression following the death of his father. She said he had taken to drinking heavily as a way to self-medicate.