Bypass protester dies on train – coroner rules misadventure

Ryan Lee Nicholson, aged 40, of Bowdown Court, was discovered in the cubicle on board a Reading-bound train, while it was stopped at Newbury station, at about 10.30pm on Saturday, September 22.
The alarm was raised after a passenger on the train alerted the driver, Kevin Salter, to the fact that someone had been in the toilets for sometime.
The toilet door was unlocked but was being obstructed by Mr Nicholson, who had slumped on the floor.
In a statement heard at an inquest at Newbury Town Hall yesterday (Wed-nesday), Mr Salter said that there was no response from Mr Nicholson and so the emergency services broke an external window to gain access.
He was pronounced dead at the scene and drug paraphernalia was found inside the cubicle.
The inquest heard Mr Nicholson had had a history of drug dependency since about 1991 and alcohol since about 2003, although he had been seeking help to deal with his addictions.
The post-mortem examination pathologist Dr Fawaz Musa, at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, said that Mr Nicholson's lungs were waterlogged, which was often the case with drug overdoses, and that the only external injuries were marks on his back from the cubicle door.
There was 226mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood in his system, as well as some drugs in a low concentrations.
He concluded that the cause of death was a combination of drug and alcohol toxicity.
Before recording his verdict, the assistant deputy coroner for Berkshire, Ashley Fegan-Earl, said that Mr Nicholson had a history of drug abuse, despite the fact he appeared to be determined to escape his addiction.
Following the inquest, his mother Dee Nicholson said that he had initially come to Newbury in the mid-1990s to protest against the building of the bypass – because the land was home to a protected type of snail, Desmoulin’s whorl snails – and he ended up staying.
She described the carpenter and wood carver as an intelligent and charismatic man who had lead a full life.
During the inquest, part of the eulogy from Mr Nicholson’s funeral was read out, which described him as a “considerate and talented man with a love for nature, saving slugs and snails.
“He was a man with a number of friends, a popular man and a considerate man, who sadly suffered from addiction to a very dangerous drug.”