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David Plunkett

Age: 21

Sex: male

Date: 17 Apr 2004

Place: Manchester Ship Canal, Manchester

David Plunkett was found dead in the Manchester Ship Canal near the Imperial War Museum two weeks after he vanished on 30 April 2004.

His official coroners finding reported his death as being due to drowning although it is thought by many people that he might have been murdered.

The last his parents heard of him was during a distressing call at 1.15am on 17 April 2004 shortly before his death, in which he was heard to be screaming and his parents thought they had heard him being attacked before the line had gone quiet.

His mother called him after receiving a call from one of his friends saying that they had become separated and were looking for him. He had been talking to his mother for about 10 minutes and then as he was saying 'I'm turning right, turning right, turning right.', they heard a scream. His mother gave the phone to his father who found him still screaming and then the phone went quiet. His parents kept the phone line open until 4.30am but didn't get a response.

His mother also said that during their call she had heard him swearing and using words that she had never heard him use before.

He had been on an organised trip to the Budweiser Music Event in Manchester at the Daytona race track in Trafford Park. There had been free drinks being handed out at the event and David Plunkett had become so drunk that he was thrown out by a security officer.

He had gone with friends from a bar in Leeds on a coach to a secret event in Manchester. He had been given six tokens to get drinks with but it was heard that after the first few token were used the bar staff had started to give out the beer for free.

His friends said that they suspected that his drinks had been spiked. One of his friends said that David Plunkett was ordinarily a happy drunk but on the night he was uncharacteristically aggressive and annoyed which made him think that his drinks had been spiked. A man that worked for the security company, Rock Steady Security said that he ejected David Plunkett and then saw him being sick outside.

A person that had seen him outside said that David Plunkett was aggressive and had asked for a fight.

His parents said that when they had spoken to him he was obviously drunk and said that he was making very little sense to them. They said that they had had to call him three times before he answered. They said that when they were speaking to him there was no noise in the background and said that it was an eerie total silence even though they thought he was supposed to be in central Manchester at a busy event.

At his post-mortem it was found that he had 185mgs of alcohol per 100mls of blood in his system where the driving limit is 80mgs although it was noted that on the night his alcohol levels would have been much higher.

David Plunkett's phone was never found.

The police said that there had been more than 3000 people at the event in Trafford Park.

David Plunkett was described as being a white male, 5ft 11in tall, of average build, with dark brown swept back hair; collar length at the back and had long thin sideburns.

He was from Shelf in Halifax and had been studying event management at Leeds Metropolitan University.


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