Retired Ulverston farmer shot himself - inquest (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Retired Ulverston farmer shot himself - inquest

11:16am Wednesday 17th March 2010 in

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THE step-son of a retired farmer who shot himself was interviewed by police who suspected foul play, an inquest was told.

When Peter Waring found his 89-year-old step-father Wilson Procter dead in the home they shared at Mandrake Head, near Ulverston, with a shotgun nearby, he moved his body and the gun and cleaned up the blood.

When officers arrived at the house on September 20 last year, they found Mr Procter’s head covered with a hood and immediately treated the death as suspicious, before taking Mr Waring to the police station for questioning.

Det Sgt John Carton, of Barrow CID, said: “We treated it as a potential crime scene. "It had been totally interfered with. "There was a forensic examination and we spoke to his friend Susan Wilding who said over the past 12 months Mr Procter had deteriorated and was frustrated with his lack of mobility.

“We interviewed Mr Waring formally and we decided later that day that there was no third party involvement. It looked like he had done it himself.”

Mr Waring told the inquest at Barrow Town Hall: “Over the past few months he’d worsened. He was not eating as much.”

Asked if he knew why his step-father had killed himself, Mr Waring said: “I’ll probably never understand. "Some people just have enough, don’t they? He hadn’t really given me any clues. He was a man of very few words.”

Mrs Wilding, of Church Walk, Flookburgh, said: ““He used to say that he would never be a burden to anybody if he ever got ill. He was a very strong man, he was his own man.”

Mrs Wilding said her friend had become ‘very, very frail,’ and when she spoke to him a few days before he died he sounded weak.

“Normally when I asked ‘are you okay?’, he would say ‘aye’, but this time he said, ‘no, not really’, and that was unusual. There was nothing there in his voice.”

South and east Cumbria coroner Ian Smith, who recorded a verdict of suicide, warned the public against clearing up after someone’s death.

“It is very distressing when somebody is found in that kind of state. If that were to happen to somebody who may read about this, then they should ring the police and leave the scene untouched.

“I don’t say that as a criticism of Mr Waring, I understand you were in deep shock and wouldn’t know what to do, but all that altering the scene does is bring suspicion on the people who have cleaned up.”