BMeller

Last updated 00:00, Saturday, 17 February 2007

By Staff Reporter

A 34-YEAR-OLD Whitehaven man with a history of heroin addiction died from an overdose, an inquest heard.

Darren Pilkington, from Fell View Avenue in Woodhouse, died on his mother’s living room floor after overdosing on morphine and methadone on November 1 last year.

A toxicology report revealed that there were quantities of both drugs in his system at the time of his death. There were also blood clots in the walls of his lungs, caused by foreign bodies being injected into the blood stream.

The inquest heard how Mr Pilkington had gone round to his mother’s house next door at 10.15am saying he found it hard to breath and had lost the feeling in both legs.

His mother Cecilia phoned an ambulance but paramedics were unable to help him and he died just after 11am.

Mr Pilkington was born in Whitehaven, the second of three brothers.

He left school at 16 and studied forestry at college, but gave this up to work on the fishing boats in Whitehaven harbour.

When he was 19 he started sniffing lighter fuel and then progressed to using heroin, which he continued to take throughout his life despite several attempts to tackle his addiction.

In 1999 Mr Pilkington met his girlfriend Samantha Sands, who also used heroin.

West Cumbria coroner John Taylor heard that in 2005 the pair stopped using it for a time, as they wanted to try and get their lives back on track.

The inquest heard that this went well until, in 2006, Mr Pilkington started working for a friend back on the boats in Whitehaven, and Samantha noticed a change in his behaviour. She confronted him, and he eventually admitted that he was using the drug again.

At Thursday’s inquest at Whitehaven Magistrates’ Court, coroner John Taylor recorded that Mr Pilkington had died from a dependance on drugs.

He said afterwards that toxiocology tests found the level of morphine in Mr Pilkington’s body were enough to lead to death in those who do not take drugs and that Mr Pilkington’s tolerance levels may have been reduced after his efforts to curb his addiction.