Children found mother dead of drugs overdose

The estranged couple, who had been trying to mend their fractured marriage, had argued in the street after Neil Hamer’s shock discovery.

The following morning, mother -of-two Marie Hamer was found dead after taking an overdose of morphine-based drugs which had been prescribed to her late mother years before.

A Sheffield inquest heard the 29-year-old from Thurnscoe, near Barnsley, had agreed in September last year to try to rebuild her relationship with her husband of 10 years.

She spoke to him on the telephone but, when Mr Hamer went to the house a short time later, he let himself in and found his estranged wife upstairs in bed with another man.

When the other man left the house, Mr Hamer went to confront him as his wife watched from the bedroom window.

After that incident, the married couple were seen hurling abuse at each other across the front garden.

Following that confrontation, Mr Hamer left.

The following morning Mrs Hamer’s children, eight-year-old Bethany-May and four-year-old Jake, along with a cousin, went to the house and found her lifeless in the dining room.

Paramedics were called and they later confirmed that she was dead.

Witness Beverley Eden, from nearby Wombwell, regarded as Mrs Hamer’s “second mum” had seen her friend late on the previous evening after receiving a distraught phone call from her.

The inquest heard she left after telling Mrs Hamer to lock the door and go to bed. At that point Mrs Hamer had been sat crying in front of her computer screen.

During their conversation she had told Mrs Eden she “had had enough” and said that something had been posted on Facebook.

Mrs Eden told the hearing that Mrs Hamer had seemed “not drunk but different”, adding that she had seemed to lose co-ordination during the visit. She said that the Hamers had an “on-off relationship” and that Mr Hamer was living with his mother, Elaine Hamer, a few doors away from his wife’s home.

Mrs Eden said she spoke to Mrs Hamer “all the time” and that she was the only person to whom she had confided that she was taking anti-depressants.

She described Mrs Hamer as a “happy-go-lucky” woman who had lots of friends and who “did like a drink, especially at weekends”.

Although Bethany-May and Jake normally lived with their mother, on the night of September 2 last year they and a cousin had been staying at the home of their paternal grandmother.

Pathologist Dr Steven Morley said Mrs Hamer had one-and-a-half to twice the drink-driving limit of alcohol in her blood at the time of her death, along with fatal levels of morphine.

Five empty packets of morphalgesics, tablets prescribed to her mother who died three years previously from cancer, were found in a waste bin at Mrs Hamer’s home.

If she had taken that number of tablets it would be consistent with the drug levels found in her body, said Dr Morley.

A statement by Mrs Hamer’s family doctor revealed that she had suffered nervous depression since her mother’s death in 2008. He had last seen her on August 26 last year.

Det Sgt Andrea Gilbert, of South Yorkshire Police, said there had been nothing suspicious about the death until the five empty blister packets of medication in her mother’s name were found.

She said that Mr Hamer had rung his wife at about 8pm on September 2 and then, at 8.50pm, he had found her with the other man.

At about 9.15pm Mrs Hamer rang her friend Mrs Eden, who was with her within 15 minutes.

Mrs Eden had seen two empty tablet packets in the bin but she said that, at that point, she had thought nothing of it.

She had also spotted an empty vodka bottle on the sideboard, along with a bottle of cola.

Recording a narrative verdict, deputy coroner Donald Coutts-Wood said that although the medical cause of death was morphine and ethanol toxicity, he could not be sure when, how or why Mrs Hamer took the tablets.