NEIGHBOURS tried to save a man who had been found dead by his mother, an inquest has heard. 

Duncan Grenville Rose, 58, was discovered unresponsive by his mother Ms Christien Rose on the morning of February 15, 2024, on the floor of his bedroom on Low Mead, Kendal. 

Mr Rose, of Oak Head Road, Walney, had visited his mother the previous day and stayed overnight. 

In a statement submitted to Cockermouth Coroner’s Court, Ms Rose said this was ‘unexpected but not unusual’. 

She said Mr Rose was alcohol-dependent and medical records documented several visits to hospital due to traumas including broken bones associated with being ‘intoxicated with alcohol’. 

He had been engaged with a support group for alcoholics at The Well in Walney but visited her regularly as he ‘felt safe at home’. 

She said that he arrived at her house on the morning of February 14 and ‘appeared sober’. 

Ms Rose said Mr Rose did not eat anything in the evening ‘which was unusual for him’, but drank ‘a couple of beers’. 

She went to bed at around 11pm leaving Mr Rose in the living room downstairs. 

Ms Rose got up at around 7am the next morning and became concerned when Mr Rose did not get up by 11am so went to wake him, the inquest heard.

She said she found him face down on the bedroom floor and that her ‘initial reaction was that he was being daft and having a joke’. 

Receiving no response to shouting his name, she found him cold to the touch and called emergency services at 10.57am 

She called for the help of neighbours, including a nurse, to perform CPR on Mr Rose until paramedics arrived, who pronounced him dead at 11.15am. 

A police investigation found no suspicious circumstances. 

A postmortem showed that Mr Rose had an enlarged heart with myocardial fibrosis, and toxicology showed amphetamine in his system. 

A level of alcohol ‘well below the drink-drive limit’ was also detected, which was deemed ‘not contributive’ to Mr Rose’s death. 

Area Coroner for Cumbria Kirsty Gomersal noted that the postmortem findings were that the amount of amphetamine in Mr Rose’s system ‘correlates poorly’ with a toxic effect but it can ‘contribute in those with underlying cardiac changes’. 

Ms Gomersal accepted the cause of death offered as myocardial fibrosis and amphetamine toxicity. 

She concluded that Mr Rose’s death was ‘due to a natural disease precipitated by amphetamine use’.