Carpenter found dead at Oxfordshire river lock car park
Alexander Collins, a 57-year-old carpenter who lived in Didcot, was found dead at Culham Lock Car Park in Abingdon on April 6 on Easter Monday.
There was a police presence for much of the day with a cordon blocking entry to the car park on the River Thames and a blue tent erected.
Police confirmed the man was found in a vehicle, not in the water, and a black four-by-four vehicle was later recovered from the scene.
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They had been called at around 4.35am and at just past 5am Madeleine Andrew, a paramedic with South Central Ambulance Service, confirmed the death.
At the time, one woman who lives in Culham, but did not want to be named, said it was "frightening" to see such a large police incident in what was usually a quiet village.
She said there were a lot of locals stood around staring, and the lock keeper was stood "with his hands on his head".
Oxfordshire Coroner's Court (Image: NQ)
She added: "It is such a beautiful public area we use and walk around every day, and now it is making us not want to go down there out of fear of what might occur.
"It has been extremely distressing to my younger sister who couldn’t sleep last night due to being worried and having full sight of what happened.
"When I was walking down, there was full visibility of the scene and police stood around.
"While I understand it is another day on the job for them, it was very distressing to locals who of course rarely if ever experience something like this in somewhere like Culham."
Culham Lock (Image: Rod Allday/Wikimedia Commons)
After he was found at the car park his body was identified on the same day by Helen Backhouse, a police officer.
Following this, an inquest was opened at Oxfordshire Coroner’s Court on Wednesday, June 10 with proceedings to resume on September 21.
Mr Collins was born on February 23, 1969, in Eccles, Greater Manchester, but lived in Didcot where he was a carpenter.
A postmortem was carried out which gave two causes of death.
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The first was toxicity from Mirtazapine (an antidepressant), Codeine (a prescription opioid pain relief medication) and alcohol toxicity.
The second was Ischaemic Heart Disease, a condition where narrowed arteries restrict blood flow to the heart, depriving it of oxygen.
This was one of several inquests to be opened on June 10, with proceedings held by the coroner to investigate and determine sudden, violent, unnatural or unexplained deaths.
Typically they will look to establish who the deceased was, where they died, when they died and how they came by their death.
