Christopher Cumpsty

Christopher Cumpsty was found dead at his home at 4.10am on 11 March 2016 by his girlfriend.

It was later determined that he had been assaulted on three separate occasions in the days before his death at various locations. The police said, 'We believe he was assaulted over the period of seven days before his death, this may have been once or several times. We can say with confidence that the injuries were not consistent with having taken place immediately before his death'. The police said that they were keeping an open mind over whether he had been assaulted by more than one person, or whether a weapon had been used.

Four people were arrested on suspicion of murder in early 2016, a 41-year-old woman, a 45-year-old man, a 30-year-old woman and a 17-year-old youth, but no one was ever charged with anything.

Christopher Cumpsty was described at his inquest as a man that had struggled with drug addiction.

His post mortem revealed that he had died from multiple injuries.

His inquest detailed the following injuries:

• 4/5 March 2016, Christopher Cumpsty was struck on the left side of his head sometime between the evening of 4 March and the early hours of 5 March 2016 which resulted in significant facial bruising.
• 9 March 2016, Christopher Cumpsty was assaulted again when he visited his drug dealer. The pathologist said that on that occasion he suffered from a type of bleed to the brain, known as a subarachnoid haemorrhage.
• 10/11 March 2016, Christopher Cumpsty received a significant blow to his head, which caused a brain stem bleed, and fractures to his ribs between two and twelve hours before his death, which was discovered at 4.10am on 11 March 2016. It was noted that Christopher Cumpsty was fitted with a defibrillator that had detected unusual heart activity at 4.58pm on 10 March 2016 and it was thought that it was then that he had been assaulted. However, little was known of his movements on that day.

Christopher Cumpsty was found dead at his home at 4.10am by his girlfriend after she came home from being at her mother's house nd paramedics were called and after attempting to resuscitate him, pronounced him dead at 4.35am.

It was also noted that it was thought that Christopher Cumpsty had also fallen off his bike at some point on 9 or 10 March 2016 as he was found by a person in the street lying next to his bike, but no one actually saw him fall off his bike. A Detective Chief Inspector said, 'At 11.30am on Wednesday 9 March, he was found on the floor round the corner from his home on Oliver Road. He said he'd just fallen off his bike. He was a cyclist, so it was not unusual for him to be in that location at that time with a pedal cycle. However, the injuries were not really consistent with him falling off his bike. He had extensive facial injuries. What I'm trying to establish is what happened after that and leading up to him being found at his home address'.

When the coroner summed up she said that whilst it was her view that the traumatic head injuries that Christopher Cumpsty suffered on 9 or 10 March 2016 had contributed to his death, she could not return a verdict of unlawful killing adding that the evidence that had been presented at the inquest could not prove that his head trauma had not been caused or contributed to by his apparent fall from his bike.

Christopher Cumpsty had recently moved to Doncaster from Lancaster a few months earlier.