There are countless factors that can lead to your death.
As Senior Coroner, I deal with nearly 4,500 fatalities a year.
NARRATOR: The coroner can make any inquiries necessary
to find a cause of death.
The police act on behalf of the coroner.
If the coroner asks, then we do it.
With unprecedented access,
we follow the coroner's full investigation.
Somebody somewhere will want to know that this person's died.
We're taking pieces in a jigsaw to formulate a cause of death.
From the moment of arrival in the mortuary
to the final conclusion of the inquest.
All rise.
I'm sorry that you're attending court under these circumstances,
and I appreciate that the evidence
that you will hear today may be distressing.
I feel like no big event happened to cause this.
I need answers, I need to know what happened that night.
If you die here, if it's violent, unnatural,
or of an unknown cause, it's my job to find out how.
I was 13 when I met Jake.
And then, when I got to 16,
that's when we ended up being together.
He was just daft, so daft.
You watch videos now, and it's of him, like,
dancing in the front room, and he always just made me smile.
I remember once he said to me,
"I promise to make you laugh for the rest of your life."
I loved everything about him.
He's all I've ever known in every, you know...
That's...
It was just what I was used to.
He was my best friend. We were always together.
Sorry.
Yeah.
I got a text to say that Jake hadn't gone to work,
and they'd not heard anything off him.
Sometimes, he'd skive and have a day off work
if he had a bit of a hangover
from partying too hard with his friends the day before,
and that's what I thought it was.
So, then I've rang my partner to go and check on him.
It only takes minutes to get up to his flat.
My partner's gone into the flat.
I've rang him, like, ten minutes later,
and he's told me, "It's not good."
SIRENS BLARE
I've just ran outside in my 'jamas, got my neighbour to watch the girls,
and ran up there as fast as I could.
I remember being in the car, thinking,
"How are all these people on the road,
"just carrying on with their normal business?
"Do you not realise my whole world's just fallen apart?"
It was just... It was horrible.
WOMAN: Yeah, yeah.
POLICE OFFICER: OK, OK.
We've received a referral from Lancashire police overnight
in relation to a 26-year-old male called Jake Broughton.
Police received an emergency call
after some of Jake's friends and family
weren't able to get hold of him.
His family have gone to his house to check on him
and check he was OK.
But sadly, they have entered the house and found him deceased.
So, this is Jake Broughton.
Dr Sissons will be carrying out an external examination on Jake.
My purpose is to check over the body
to make sure there's no evidence of third party involvement
and to ascertain that it's consistent
with what the police found.
There's no obvious previous injuries there.
Can we have a look at his back? Yeah, of course.
And there's nothing at all there.
I'm basically looking for any previous self-harm injuries,
particularly to his wrists, checking the hands and the knuckles
to make sure he's not been involved in any altercation.
But at the moment, I... I can't see any such marks.
So, we've identified a broad ligature mark,
which extends from below the right chin
to the occipital region.
When it happens completely out of the blue,
I think it must be so hard
to deal with for... for all those concerned,
and it is massively sad.
In terms of Jake's medical history,
he doesn't have any medical problems,
he doesn't have a complex history in terms of his mental health.
So, sadly, it does leave a lot of questions for the family.
There's a small bruise on the outer aspect
of the right upper arm, 3x1 cm,
but apart from this,
there are no other marks of injury or violence.
That's me done.
Jake's death is unexpected.
His family have had no inkling of what was about to occur.
We're trying to rule things out
and give them the answer as to what caused the death.
But until we have all the pieces,
we can't give the family the answers they need.
I can't understand it.
Because he always seemed so full of life every time we saw him,
you know, big smiles, belly laughing and, you know...
He started a new job and were enjoying that.
He had an air hostess girlfriend.
You know, you think everything would be okey-dokey.
He's never said anything.
He's always been happy. We-we...
We didn't think there'd be anything wrong.
Right now, we've got a lot of questions going round our heads,
but we don't have the answers for it.
NARRATOR: At Jake Broughton's external examination,
the coroner has ordered samples
to be taken for the toxicology lab...
We've got blood in vitros.
..but has not requested any internal investigations or scans.
Toxicology is often important in situations like this
to try and ascertain whether there was any drugs
in the system of the deceased at the time of his death.
Having completed the examination,
I just provisionally give a cause of death,
and that's followed by a typed detailed report
of my findings and conclusions.
At the time of his death,
Jake was training to become a qualified electrician...
..working alongside his best friend, Jack.
This van, we spent every day in.
Every morning, I'd get in the van, connect my phone to Bluetooth,
but I've always gotta change the Bluetooth
because the first name's Jake.
So every day, I've gotta change it from Jake's phone to mine.
I haven't brought myself to delete it yet.
I think if I delete that, it's like, it's over, it's done.
Working with your best friend was the best.
The best time ever, you could say.
Every day, it was a case of
"what can we do that's funny and make each other laugh?"
We were working at a block of offices,
and the wall was getting taken out the next day,
so we decided we were gonna
cut our own life-size cut-outs of each other within the walls.
LAUGHTER
JAKE: 'Ey! LAUGHS
Yeah, it's hard to fill that gap.
I've got another best friend that works with me,
but it was the three of us.
Now it's the two.
Jack's father, John, was with Jake the day before he died.
We have to do a health and safety exam every three years,
and Jake got the highest score.
Because the picture's still on the computer in the account room.
Yeah. That were the last day we saw him.
Yeah. He was supposed to be in
morning the next day at quarter to seven,
but obviously he didn't turn in.
There was nothing leading up to it that we were aware of at all.
It was just, like, out of the blue.
It's...
It was quite a shock
because you never expect anything like that at all.
It's sad, innit? It is.
HE SNIFFS
We'd only seen him, what, less than a week before, you know?
All fine, laughing and joking, usual Jake.
When we went into the flat,
there were a delivery from Amazon,
and it's secret Santa things for work.
So why? Why... You think, "Why would you do that?"
Like... you know?
Everything appeared normal.
He was just, like, a star entertainer.
Always happy.
He always had a lot of energy from an early age.
He was so friendly.
You know, we'd be sat in the house,
and there'd be a string of girls outside the window.
But, yeah, he had everything going for him.
Literally everything.
DOG BARKS
Because I'm mentioning his name, he sits there,
looks towards the patio doors, waiting for him to walk in.
It's as though it's not true,
and he's just gonna walk in that door.
That night, he'd been out for a meal with his friends,
he'd been to work.
I feel like no big event happened to cause this.
He very rarely spoke about how he felt.
Maybe every now and again,
he would express a few concerns about...
..you know, he was upset about a situation.
But comments about his mental health
or being unhappy were very few and far between,
and he only showed very small snippets of sadness.
LAUGHTER
He was like the life and soul.
He'd always be there at the parties and out on the weekend.
Jake was such a lovely lad with a big personality.
He just liked to party, have a good time with his mates.
But his drinking...
obviously, the recreational drugs...
..it scared me, really scared me.
He wouldn't openly tell you that that was an issue.
Or say that he had a problem, he was very in denial with it.
I would say that it was a problem, but he would not openly admit that.
SIRENS BLARE
In Blackburn, paramedics are rushing
to the home of 69-year-old Leslie Hodgkinson,
who's been found unresponsive.
Attempts to revive him are unsuccessful,
and he's pronounced dead at home.
Initially, I've attended scene
following the report of a sudden death.
The police protocol is for us to attend on behalf of the coroner.
We have to check the body for any marks
to see if there's anything that would show
that it would be a suspicious death.
Obviously for dignity,
I've asked the family members to leave the room.
He was very gaunt, quite slim,
weak around the arms, like, not a lot of muscle mass,
which we would expect within the elderly.
The thing that struck me is it was a bit of a treasure trove.
He had animal collectibles around the house,
and it was really a representation, I thought,
of what his character was.
It was very much his space.
We've had a death referred to us
of a 69-year-old gentleman, Mr Leslie Hodgkinson.
And we are investigating this death
because the family tell us that during his working life
as an apprentice in a local factory,
Mr Hodgkinson was involved in the cutting up of asbestos sheets.
The area in which we work
was historically a very industrial area
with a large working class population.
So, there was a large number of gentlemen of Mr Hodgkinson's age
who were employed in the local mills and factories.
Health and safety was very different all those years ago.
In fact, it was probably non-existent.
So unfortunately,
exposure to asbestos is something that we do see quite often.
So, what we need to establish now is whether or not
that exposure to asbestos has caused or contributed to his death.
A limited postmortem has been ordered
to focus on his heart and on his lungs.
That's where the illness that has killed him is most likely to be.
So, I'm just gonna remove the heart and lungs,
so it's limiting the postmortem as much as possible
so that we, you know, disturb the body no more than we need to.
We know this man's a joiner, and people working as joiners
might come across large quantities of asbestos
which they have to deal with.
Asbestos can cause tumours in the lung,
which I'll be looking out for today, and they can also cause fibrosis.
That's defuse scarring of the lungs, and that's called asbestosis.
So it's immediately clear that there is some asbestos-related disease.
We've got a big lump of calcified fibrous tissue.
They're called plaques,
and that's actually stuck down to the lung here.
So that plaque, although it's originated from the chest wall,
it's actually become stuck down to the lungs.
It's not a serious condition, but it's indicator
that the person has been exposed to asbestos.
The invasive postmortem needs histology
to confirm whether asbestos has contributed to Leslie's death.
I'm taking lots of small pieces of lung tissue from both lungs,
send them off to the laboratory, and they process them,
and we end up having very thin sections
to look at down the microscope
to see if there's any asbestos-induced disease going on.
Asbestos is made up of very tiny, thin crystals
that you can inhale into your lungs.
In the 1960s and '70s, it was a very common building material.
It was unknown that the dust caused significant illness
for people breathing it in.
I'm involved with cases like this, I'd say once, twice a month?
Yeah. Once a fortnight.
So there's still a lot of asbestos-related disease
to people getting exposed in the '70s and '80s.
The repressions of the asbestos used is,
you know, 20, 30 years later,
we're still seeing it, aren't we, yeah?
Exposure to asbestos doesn't immediately cause problems,
but when it does develop problems, they're usually serious.
Dr Sissons must also take samples of Leslie's heart.
After we've examined the lungs and the heart,
we'll hopefully be able to provide a cause of death.
Right, I'm done.
The results of the external examination
on 26-year-old Jake Broughton
are being reviewed by coroner's officer Chloe.
Dr Sissons said that the circumstances of the death,
together with the findings of the external examination,
are fully consistent with a death by hanging.
Er, we now need to wait for the toxicology,
which could take a few weeks.
Dr Adeley has asked me to perform a drugs screen
to look for any drugs that may have been taken
in the hours before he died.
That may be prescription drugs,
to make sure he was adhering to drugs,
or maybe he might have taken illicit compounds,
or possible that he'd been drinking alcohol before his death.
Drink or drugs can affect the way that you perceive
obstacles or difficulties when you're under the influence.
We don't know whether or not he's had a drink,
taken drugs, and whether or not this has affected
the way that he makes decisions.
Our testing can provide the families with some useful knowledge
of what happened in the hours before that person died.
I do think something will come back in toxicology.
I don't think he'd have done that on a sane mind.
Because, like... Arlo was his world,
like, my first child.
ARLO: One more time. JAKE: One more time.
Jake's turn! SINGING: Rosy time.
We used to call him Funcle Jake, so he was the fun uncle.
He'd dance around with them,
soak them in summer, like... water fights.
# We all fall down! # Whoa! Ah.
Now sit on the floor. Get him! JAKE SQUEALS
I'm sure he wouldn't have done that to the kids.
Spin it around, Jake! I am doing, look. Whoo!
Whoo! I can have it?
Yeah, there you go.
I had a conversation with his niece,
and she said, "When Jake comes back down..."
And I said, "Jake isn't going to come back down."
And she said, "Why?" And I said, "Because he likes it up there."
And she said, "But he liked it down here."
And that really hurt because...
I THOUGHT he liked it down here.
But he obviously didn't like it enough to stay.
NARRATOR: Coroner's officers are investigating the death
of 69-year-old Leslie Hodgkinson
and whether it's connected to asbestos.
Leslie was a member of his local Working Men's Club.
CHATTER
Les were your typical working class man from a north-west town.
Soon as he walked in t'room, it lit up.
You knew you were in for a good night once Les come in.
I heard about Les's passing through... through a phone call.
Soon as I come off the phone, my wife said, "Who were that?"
And-and I said, "It's Les." And she knew.
She knew right away to come and give me a hug,
and I'm not one for hugs,
but she knew that night, I needed a hug
cos I'd lost my best friend.
Yeah.
I think you can count your true friends on one hand.
And I think he took three of my fingers up.
So, that's how close it were, and that's... It hit me bad.
His love for birds were unbelievable.
We used to go many a time over to Manchester
to do his pigeon racing.
He always made sure he'd come back the Bolton way
where he could go and get a pasty.
We used to have a lot of conversations,
heart-to-heart conversations,
and, er... he used to tell me about his joinery days.
In them days, joiners shops usually made coffins as a sideline,
and Les were cutting the asbestos to go inside the coffins.
So he certainly did use asbestos,
but it was the in material, weren't it?
It were used for everything.
See, there were no health and safety, were there? No.
The only health and safety is you making sure
that you had your flask filled of a morning.
Not what they had... you had on your feet and gloves
and goggles, it were what you had in your thermos.
HE CHUCKLES
At the lab, samples taken from Leslie Hodgkinson's heart
and lungs are being prepared.
So, we check what size the tissue is.
We'll select an appropriately-sized mould,
fill that up with molten wax,
and then we position the tissue in there.
And that will hold it in position in the wax as it cools.
Now we want them to be solidified,
so this is a cold plate, and it's chilling those blocks down,
so that the wax will be nice and hard
with the tissue supported inside it.
So, this is the microtome.
So, every time we turn the handle, it moves forward by four microns,
and that's about one cell thick.
And we've got these incredibly sharp blades.
They're really, really sharp, so we have to be very careful.
We slot it into there, and that grips it in place.
Moving this backwards to align the tissue up with that blade...
..really gently and slowly.
So, we lay them down onto some nice warm water,
and that just eases out any crinkles.
Just guide it onto the glass slide.
And then that's gonna dry out here.
The final step is to dip them in dye
to make the slides easier to see under a microscope.
Now that they've been stained up with the hemotoxin and the eosin,
the pathologist will then be able to see
all the different tissue components down the microscope.
He'll be able to see each individual cell
and all the architecture of the tissue,
how it would have looked in the patient.
I'd definitely like to know what the cause of his death were,
because if he died with asbestosis,
someone's the cause of that.
Coroner's officers are investigating
the unexpected death of 26-year-old Jake Broughton.
His family are still processing what's happened.
I'm going to a friend of mine.
It's a salon for a tattoo.
First-ever tattoo, never thought I'd ever get one,
but it's in memory of Jake.
It's just an imprint of him on me for... forever.
I want Jake's name, and I want underneath,
"Me, my shadow and I," because that's what he was.
Hello. Are you OK?
Give us a hug. Hey.
Right. Let's, er... Let's go?
Yeah, yeah.
So, nice and still, OK? Mmm.
As still as you can be.
He'd be laughing at me now, thinking, "You silly old beggar."
Yeah.
I just can't get my head round it.
I don't think I ever will.
And then you start asking yourself, "Well, why? Why?"
That's the biggest question, isn't it? Yeah.
I just don't get it, but at the end of the day,
I think men have been conditioned not to speak
and keep their feelings inside.
As a man as well, it's the idea that men should be men,
and... and... and they shouldn't...
But that's so wrong.
It doesn't matter who you are or what you are,
it's OK to talk when we're not OK.
Yeah. Yeah. HE INHALES
Jake's family believe that he may have been hiding
mental health problems around the time of his death.
His dad, Keith, is heading to meet a men's suicide prevention charity
near his home in Glasgow to search for answers.
Hiya. Hiya, pal, in you come.
I'll just put this away, so there's plenty of space
for guys to come in, eh? OK.
How many people are you expecting?
We've been averaging about 14, 15 here, so...
15? Aye, which is good numbers, eh? So we'll see who turns up tonight.
Obviously, we started in 2016
after a young man, Andy Roberts, took his own life.
We just wanted to stop other families
going through that loss and devastation and...
Yeah. ..and encourage a conversation.
Cos we're shit as it is... As men, we're shit at talking about the...
the stuff that we need to talk about, eh?
Cos we're not brought up like that.
So, I think it's important to...
to open up and normalise a conversation
around mental health, and particularly, suicide,
because it's still seen as a taboo subject.
From my son's point of view, he never said anything to anybody.
It were a total... total shock.
Talking from my own struggles with mental health
and a failed suicide attempt,
I didn't want to talk to anyone about what I was going through.
And I genuinely thought I was the only guy going through it,
and no-one else would understand,
because I was brought up that big boys don't cry,
you should man up, you shake it off and bottle it up.
We now have almost 180 groups across the UK,
nearly 4,500 men a week walking through the doors,
so if we can get a group within 30 minutes of every man in the UK,
the more chance we've got at saving lives.
As you say, if it can stop one person
from doing what my son did, then that's a positive to us.
Good boy. DOG BARKS
Why didn't he ask anybody, or why didn't he talk to anybody,
or why... why didn't he just ring me up?
There's not gonna be any answers,
and that's just what we've... we're gonna have to live with.
Done.
When you want... OK.
..stand up slowly, and then you can check it out, OK?
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Wow. Amazing.
I'd like the memory of me To be a happy one
I'd like to leave An afterglow of smiles
When life is done
I'd like to leave an echo Whispering softly down the ways
Of happy times and laughing times
And bright and sunny days
I'd like tears, of those who grieve To dry before the sun
Of happy memories that I leave When life is done.
Jake's death is an unnatural death and will have to go to inquest.
But inquests quite often have unanswered questions.
So, it will be very hard
to understand what has happened in his final moments.
That's always with the deceased person.
Dr Sissons is analysing samples
of Leslie Hodgkinson's heart and lungs
for evidence of asbestos damage.
Let's see what's going on in the lungs.
Erm...
Although we know this man has been exposed to asbestos,
there's no asbestos bodies that I can see in his lungs.
There's no evidence that he has asbestos-related lung disease.
NARRATOR: At Blackburn hospital,
Dr Sissons is continuing his analysis
of Leslie Hodgkinson's heart and lungs.
So, if we have a look at this bit of lung tissue here...
Compare this bit of lung tissue with what is going on... there.
There's loss of lung tissue in those areas.
He's got cigarette damage to his lungs, and this is emphysema.
OK. This is a very thin section of heart.
There's a lot of fibres which are just dead or degenerating there,
so this just indicates that the blood supply to this heart
has not been good for some time.
Which means there's gonna be a lack of oxygen
getting to these cells.
And these cells will slowly die,
and when they die, they just get replaced with scar tissue,
which can't contract or pump or do the job of the normal heart cells.
We've now received the postmortem report
from the pathologist Dr Sissons,
and there's no evidence to suggest that that exposure to asbestos
has caused or contributed to his death.
The cause of death will be acute cardiac failure
and contributing factors
of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia.
This is bringing back memories.
When you lose a close friend, it takes some getting used to.
And... I do... I miss him.
I miss him. I'll never find another friend like him.
He were an absolute wonderful bloke, yeah.
Yeah.
And I just... Yeah. HE CLEARS THROAT
Les was happy outside with his birds.
If he'd have been here now,
he'd have been straight in that loft, picking t'best pigeon out.
HE CHUCKLES God rest his soul, he would.
Mm.
They've got some speed on them!
'Les had a lot of influence on me.'
Go on!
'He rekindled my love for t'countryside,
'so that'll never leave me.
'So he'll always be here.'
It's the day of Jake's inquest.
Good morning. Can I take your name, please?
Oh, yes. I'll let you in.
I'm a bit nervous, a bit apprehensive.
Cos you're just walking into the unexpected,
you don't know what you're walking into, I suppose.
It's horrible.
Feels a bit like a nightmare, don't it?
So, once this is over,
hopefully we can start to, like, rebuild ourselves a bit.
My name's Alice Swarbrick, I'm the Coroner's Officer Manager
for Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen Coroner's Service.
So, the coroner today is Dr James Adeley.
He's the senior coroner.
Coroner's court is like a magistrates and a crown court.
The only difference is we can't prosecute,
we don't apportion blame, we're a fact-finding process.
An inquest asks four questions.
Who has died, where and when the death occurred,
and usually, the most difficult question of all,
HOW someone has died.
In this case, there's the question
of did he intend to take his own life
and succeed by the means he adopted?
And whether or not drink or drugs
are related to his cause of death.
All rise.
To Jake's family and friends,
I'm very sorry that you're attending court under these circumstances.
Jake was a very pleasant young man who loved life
and was the life and soul of the party.
He was known by his nieces as "Funcle"
for being the fun uncle that he was.
He was also described by his partner and his sister
as having a sensitive side,
that he didn't deal with certain things very well
and could take them out of proportion.
This was especially the case if he'd had a drink.
The toxicology found breakdown products of cocaine and ethanol.
And this may cause cognitive and cardiac impairment.
Now, I understand that you were the duty inspector.
Could you tell me about the examination of the scene?
An attempt has been made, but that hasn't been strong enough,
and Jake has sought out a second item to re-attempt.
Question here is did he intend to take his own life?
There are two attempts at a ligature,
so in my view, he did intend to take his own life.
This is an extremely tragic outcome.
But it's a recurrent theme
in the way that young men take their lives.
It tends to be impulsive acts
that if they'd had more time to consider it,
they would still be with us today.
Suicide is the leading cause of death
amongst males under 35 years of age in the UK.
It is something that needs to be addressed
in order to prevent tragic cases like Jake's occurring again.
You really have no idea
the depths of what is going on in somebody's mind.
And I think that is a big problem with men and mental health.
I had no idea how intense
these feelings and thoughts were, going on, and...
I didn't... I didn't... I didn't know.
Nobody knew, otherwise we would have definitely
driven him to have done more.
The initiatives to try and get men to open up are so worthwhile.
They stop families like this having terrible tragedies.
There is always an answer.
I can tell you now that everyone would have solved every problem
that Jake would have ever had to just have him here.
If I could turn the clock back, I'd do so many things differently.
But you just... I can't change what's happened.
I obviously wish I could, I'd take everything away.
It's just... my best friend, I've lost him.
We're going to Jake's flat
because although what happened in there wasn't nice,
it still holds a lot of great memories.
I've been here a couple of times since he's passed away.
I stand here and remember times
when we've taken selfies, walking down these stairs,
and we've been on our way to a night out, and...
When he used to come home from work,
he always used to look up at that window.
And when he'd say "I'll be home at 6:00,"
and it got to ten past, I'd be waiting at the window.
And when he'd get in, he'd say,
"I knew you'd be looking at me out the window."
I'd say, "I've been waiting here for you."
SHE SIGHS
Yeah.
It brings back a lot of memories. But good ones.
Police have attended, they've forced entry,
and sadly found this gentleman deceased.
No sign of any injuries to his face or head.
So I'm gonna put a bit of fingerprint powder on now.
We was in a state of shock.
It's gone from "Oh, she's OK, she'll be home in the morning,
"she's just got dehydration," to "She's in organ failure."