Inquest told of hanged man's final evening

An inquest into the death of the second black man from the same family to be found hanged in Telford was told yesterday of the moment he was discovered by a close friend.

From the moment he saw the belt around Jason McGowan's neck, Eddy Mansel said he knew it was "too late'' to save him.

The hearing, which was packed with members of the McGowan family, was told the 20-year-old was found suspended from railings near a pub where he had been celebrating on Millennium eve with his wife of only a few months.

Jason's death, six months after his uncle Errol McGowan, 34, was found hanged from a door handle at a house he was looking after for a friend, shocked his family and rocked the community.

Yesterday, the McGowans returned to the conference room of the Moat House Hotel, where Errol's inquest was held, to hear the details of Jason's death. Nine months after she listened – in the same venue – to weeks of evidence about how Errol, her brother, died after a campaign of racial harassment, Doreen McGowan was back before the Telford and Wrekin coroner's court for the inquiry into her son's death, accompanied by relatives including her elderly mother, Icyline, and Jason's widow Sinead, 25.

Michael Gwynne, the coroner, opened the inquest, which is expected to last five weeks and hear from 87 witnesses selected from the 1,350 people interviewed by police, by emphasising how these two deaths had affected the area as well as West Mercia Police.

He told the jury: "This inquest is of an extremely sensitive nature and has already had an impact on this community and also on the procedures of the police when investigating unexplained deaths.''

Mr Mansel, 28, a friend of Jason McGowan's, was the first to give evidence. He told how he and a friend, Dominic Broadhurst, had come across the body while walking at 5am on New Year's Day, 2000.

When a glint of light on Mr McGowan's glasses first caught his eye, he assumed his friend was sleeping off the celebrations but when he leant over railings and saw he was suspended by his belt, "everything went into slow motion".

"Even now I can see how it was,'' he told the court as he described the scene.

"I am talking to Dom and something catches my eye and I look and see that it was Jason lying against the wall,'' he said.

"I actually said 'fair play' he has had a good night and he is asleep against the wall.

As he jumped over and saw Mr McGowan on the other side, in a sitting position with his feet on the ground and the belt tied to the railings, he realised he was terribly wrong.

The two called an ambulance but Mr Mansel said: "From looking at him you could see it was too late.''

He agreed with Emily Thornberry, representing the McGowan family, that the young man had been his "usual smiley self'' earlier that night.

But others, who had been celebrating with them in the Elephant and Castle pub in Ketley – 100 metres from where he was found – had a different recollection.

In a string of statements, some friends said he seemed upset after a "tiff'' with his wife and disappeared alone.

Terri Edwards described seeing him run across the pub and burst out the doors followed by his wife. She returned but he did not. Pub manageress Sharon Fairbrother said he walked off when asked to pose for a picture while Anthony Farr related he had walked into the toilet to find Mr McGowan in tears when his wife came in to get him.

Others said he had been very upset about his uncle's recent death and worried about a pending court case for assault. The inquest continues.