A coroner has ruled today, October 21, that the death of a man in Pilgrims Way earlier this year was an accident.

Daniel Ross Gray was found dead in his room on February 18, with the coroner stating that he had been “suffering quite significantly from a lot of pain.”

This had been caused by a series of sporting and working accidents, causing pain in his hip, legs and back. Dr Ruth Jones, a GP at Andover Medical Centre, said that in once incident, a large load at a building site had fallen onto his right ankle.

Daniel said that he had been unable to afford time off, so kept working, but that it was “now painful to walk or sleep,” and he “needed a stick to walk for more than 20 mins.”

As a result, he was given pain-relief medication. He was meant to be taking four a day, but his partner Laura said that he had been “buying extra tablets” and “taking 10 a day.”

On Valentine’s Day 2020, Laura said Daniel had purchased “a small amount of heroin” on February 14, and after an argument, he had left to return to his home alone with the intention of smoking it.

As a result, the Coroner, Christopher Wilkinson, said that he believed Daniel died later that evening while “seeking to manage the pain he had” as “his body wasn’t used to that type of drug.”

Laura had received no response when trying to visit Daniel over the following couple of days, with his body being discovered by his landlord on February 18 after he arrived to discuss unpaid rent.

Having been unable to gain access to Daniel’s room as the key was in the lock, he climbed a ladder to the window, where he saw that Daniel “looked blue and wasn’t breathing.” Police were called, and climbed through the window, where they confirmed Daniel had died.

Under his body, they found a lighter and pipe, with a post-mortem subsequently finding that his cause of death was from morphine toxicity.

Daniel’s father was in court for the inquest, and said that Daniel compared himself to his twin brother Nathan, and “almost had a complex comparing himself with his twin.”

He described him as “very tender” and a loving boy, though said their relationship had been “very strained” for a number of years. When the family had relocated to Weymouth, Daniel chose to remain in Andover, and they would communicate by messages when Daniel “had sufficient credit.”

While Daniel had previously attempted to end his own life on a number of occasions, his mother, in a statement read out in court, said she believed “his life was taking an upward turn” when she last saw him.

The Coroner, while making his verdict, said that he did not believe Daniel’s death was a result of an attempt at self-harm, and was instead came as Daniel “attempted to self-medicate his pain.”

A verdict of accidental death was declared.