First Posted on Antidepaware.co.uk
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Belper News
July 18, 2013
A coroner has recorded an open verdict at an inquest into the death of a Horsley Woodhouse woman.
Former hosiery worker Leah Shaw, 77, of Fairfield Road, died on February 2 this year. A post-mortem examination showed she had high levels of the anti-depressant fluoxetine in her body.
An inquest at Derby and South Derbyshire Coroners’ Court heard she had suffered from anxiety and depression since the late 1970s.
In the lead up to her death she told family that she missed her husband Terence who was in a nursing home.
Giving evidence, her son Richard Shaw, said: “She wouldn’t have killed herself, she wasn’t brave enough.”
He added that his mum would visit his dad every Thursday and had said she didn’t ‘want to be here anymore’ to see him deteriorate. Mr Shaw said: “If you knew my mother you took it with a pinch of salt, they were just words.”
Deputy assistant coroner, Paul McCandless, said he had to establish if the overdose was an accident or intentional. He said: “The overdose may well suggest an intention but the evidence does not take me sufficiently down either of those two avenues. The only verdict is that of an open verdict.”