‘No evidence’ Speed intended to take own life

Former Wales football manager Gary Speed was found hanged in his home after rowing with his wife, his inquest heard yesterday.

Speed and his wife, Louise, had been going through “ups and downs” but were “working through” their problems, she told the hearing at Warrington Coroners Court.

The couple, who married in 1996, were arguing against a background of “stresses” connected to the 42-year-old’s job managing the Welsh national team, Cheshire Coroner Nicholas Rheinberg was told.

They “had words” in the hours before he was found dead at 7am on Sunday, November 27, last year, after returning home from a dinner party at a friend’s house.

After being locked out of the house and spending the night in her car, Louise found her husband dead in the garage of their home in Huntington, Cheshire.

Blinking away tears she said: “I went to the window and there I saw him.”

She said she then woke their two boys, who had been sleeping upstairs, to let her in the house and called the emergency services.

Louise Speed said her husband had talked of taking his life in a text exchange about five days earlier. She said: “He talked in terms about taking his own life and then he moved on and talked about moving forward and how important the boys were to him.”

Asked if the Wales job was forcing him to spend more time away from his family, she said: “I think he was spending more hours there than he thought he would do initially.”

Also giving evidence was former Newcastle striker Alan Shearer, a close friend of Speed’s. He said the two families had enjoyed holidays together and on their most recent trip, in August last year, Gary Speed was “more relaxed this year than I have ever seen him”.

But Shearer said he was aware of a “couple of issues” between Speed and his wife. “My response was that is usual in a relationship that is so long standing,” he said. “I think he took the advice well as his words were that he was ’going to give it a go’ and ‘stick in there’.”

Rheinberg gave the cause of death as hanging but said “the evidence does not sufficiently determine whether this was intentional or accidental”.

Investigators believed that Speed had been sitting in his garage. Rheinberg said: “It seems likely Mr Speed was sitting for some time with a ligature around his neck. “It may have been that this was some sort of dramatic gesture, not normally in Mr Speed’s character.”

Rheinberg said it was a “possibility” he was sat there for some time and he “nodded off to sleep” with the ligature still around his neck.