Fake hanging stunt became tragic reality

A MAN who used to shock his girlfriend by pretending to hang himself with a sheet from a banister died after hanging himself for real, an inquest heard.

Attempts were made to revive former waste recycling plant worker Darren Tunstill, 28, but he died two days later in Rotherham District Hospital.

His girlfriend Karina Bradshaw, who lived with the heroin addict father-of-four in Dinnington, South Yorkshire, told the hearing in Rotherham yesterday that she left him a few months previously after she found out he was having an affair.

He made threats to kill himself after she began living with her mother. Miss Bradshaw said: “I would get a text saying he was going to kill himself. When I got home he would be on the stairs with a sheet round his neck like a noose attached to a banister. He would take it off and say ‘sorry’.”

The inquest was told Mr Tunstill had recently been more cheerful and was due to go into hospital for a detox programme. But the couple were being monitored by social services and feared losing their children.

Miss Bradshaw said she returned home on September 24 last year to find Mr Tunstill hanging from the stairs after she received a text saying “I don’t want to lose you.”

Toxicology tests found he had taken a potentially fatal dose of heroin. The cause of death was given as hypoxia due to hanging and heroin injection.

Recording an open verdict, deputy coroner Fred Curtis said there was a reasonable doubt over whether he did intend to kill himself. He said: “He had made many threats before which had never been carried out.”