Suicide note left by ‘model husband’

Imants Tracums, a 41-year-old father-of- two, was a model husband until the weeks preceding the discovery of his body next to a West Yorkshire reservoir.

An inquest at Halifax town hall heard that the machine operator failed to return from lunch at his factory in Leeds on January 12.

He was seen driving his Honda Civic erratically on the M62 that evening before abandoning it after crashing into the central reservation next to Booth Wood Reservoir between the motorway and the A672 Oldham Road at Rishworth, Calderdale.

Despite a search by police officers and a German shepherd sniffer dog he could not be found and it was not until a helicopter search was made two days later on January 14 that his body was found in a culvert.

A pathologist said he had died from severe blood loss after a series of self-inflicted wounds was made to his neck and upper limbs. Mr Tracums, who was born in Latvia, lived in Osmondthorpe, east Leeds, with his wife Jelena Tracuma and their two daughters.

Mrs Tracuma, in a statement read to the court by acting West Yorkshire coroner Professor Paul Marks, said her husband had been a caring, protective husband before developing mental health problems a month before his death.

She said: “Our marriage was wonderful, my girlfriends envied me.”

Prof Marks recorded a verdict that Mr Tracums, who left a suicide note, took his own life.