Officers failed to help man dying on bus outside Wolverhampton police station

Passenger Tony Jones had been taken ill on the double decker travelling from Dudley to Tettenhall when it diverted to Bilston Street Police Station on October 17, the hearing in Smethwick was told yesterday.

It was assumed Mr Jones, of Gill Street, Netherton, had fallen asleep drunk when he slumped forward in his seat after drinking beer from a can, it was said.

Driver Mr Ravinder Kumar stopped the Dudley to Tettenhall service at Fighting Cocks to check on the 28-year-old but got no response. He explained: "I was told he was drunk, thought he might be violent and decided to go straight to the police station."

Mr Kumar asked passing Special Constable Stefan Jones in the foyer of Bilston Street Police Station in Wolverhampton if somebody could get a drunk off his bus but did not suggest it was an emergency.

The special constable went into a room where 14 officers from the business neighbourhood team were being briefed about a new terrorist threat to see if anybody could deal with the incident.

Pc Darren Neville, among the officers, insisted: "I told him we were in a briefing and the response team would have to deal with it but all 14 of us would have been out from that office if we had known it was an emergency."

The driver had left the police station when the special constable came back to the foyer and assumed somebody else had dealt with the matter which was not logged, it was said.

Mr Kumar returned to the police station a second time soon afterwards and was in the reception desk queue when a passenger came to warn that the person might have stopped breathing, the inquest was told.

He jumped the queue but was told by Miss Permi Chima he would have to make a 999 call on his own phone if it was an emergency because she was dealing with another person and knew nothing about the incident.

Police finally came out of the station as paramedics tried unsuccessfully to save the man who was certified dead at the scene within an hour of the bus arriving.

The deceased had two and a half times the drink-drive alcohol limit and traces of heroin and sleeping pills in his blood, said pathologist Dr Manel Mangalika who estimated the cocktail could have caused death within half an hour.

Black Country Coroner Mr Zafar Siddique concluded it was a drugs and alcohol related death and the outcome was unlikely to have been different if police had intervened sooner. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating.