THE heartbroken parents of a 21-year-old Bovey Tracey restaurant worker told an inquest how he stabbed himself in the chest with a kitchen knife towards the end of Mother's Day.
Nicholas Ridgewell, who had a serious drink problem, ran at the kitchen wall twice with the knife reversed in his hand, the Newton Abbot inquest heard on Wednesday.
He lived with his family at the Brookside Restaurant in Station Road, Bovey. When he came home on the night he died he was argumentative as he often was when he had been drinking, his father Edward said. He asked him to be quiet because his mother Jane was asleep.
Nicholas was upset to find his on-off girlfriend Leanne was staying the night there with his sister Sarah.
Mr Ridgewell told his son it would be best if he found somewhere else to live, and for a moment he thought Nicholas was going out there and then – about midnight – to do something about it.
He became aware that Nicholas had something behind his back and although he admitted everything was a little hazy, he realised it was a knife.
'I tried to get the knife off him, but I didn't try hard enough,' Mr Ridgewell told the inquest.
There had been other occasions when he had to call the police after his son had been drinking and this time his wife, who had woken up, tried to dial them, but asked him to do it, as she was having difficulty.
At that point Nicholas ran at the wall with the knife but he seemed to bounce off, and appeared normal.
'I tried to talk to him in a calm voice, I tried to get some sense into him,' Mr Ridgewell said.
But Nicholas pushed him out of the door, and as he was phoning the police, there was a crash.
'He's done it,' Jane shouted. He ran to get a towel but his son was bleeding quite badly, his eyes were open but he wasn't able to speak.
'He was moaning a bit,' Mr Ridgewell said.
In a statement read to the inquest Philip Rogers, manager of the Old Thatch pub in Station Road, said that Nicholas would sometimes drink seven or eight double whiskies neat, but he had been trying to cut down.
There had been an occasion when he refused to serve him but he realised Nicholas, who had a serious drink problem for such a young man, went on to other pubs.
Mr Rogers described him as 'a bit of a loner', who enjoyed playing the gaming machine – and on the day he died he won the £20 jackpot.
Kathleen Croydon, the manageress of the Riverside Inn agreed that Nicholas was a loner, but insisted he never caused any problems.
Asked by Hamish Turner, Torbay and South Devon Coroner, if Nicholas was a bit withdrawn, a bit depressed, she said: 'Some days, but other days he would be happy.'
She agreed with the coroner that she had heard he had smoked cannabis and learned from the barman that on the day he died he had drunk 10 pints.
Leanne Stoneman of Meadowside, Highweek, agreed her relationship with Nicholas had been an on-and-off one and that part of the reason they had split up was because of his drinking.
But they saw a lot of each other and used to get bored with one another, she explained.
On the night he died Nicholas poked his head round the door of Sarah's bedroom – where she was sleeping – to see if she was all right. Later she heard a discussion between him and his father when it was suggested it was time Nicholas moved out.
'He started to get a bit louder,' Miss Stoneman said. She heard Nicholas say: 'Either she goes or I go.'
She heard his parents trying to get the knife from him and then Mrs Ridgewell asked her to go.
Jane Ridgewell, who sobbed as she took the oath, said that she woke to the sound of loud voices. She got up and went to the kitchen in an effort to calm things down, but she admitted she just couldn't handle her son when he was drunk.
She tried to phone the police but couldn't as she was shaking so much.
She heard a thud, ran into the kitchen and found him slumped there. When the ambulancemen came they did what they could.
PC Roy Bolt said that Mrs Ridgewell removed the knife from her son's chest and threw it across the kitchen. The main wound was to the left of centre of the lower chest, one and a half inches in length and half an inch wide. There was a second wound an inch above it.
Coroner's officer Rick Parsons said that a post mortem showed the main stab wound had been through the heart passing through the abdomen to pierce the aorta.
Nicholas' blood alcohol level was 172 milligrams in 100 millilitres of blood.
The coroner, who recorded a verdict of suicide, expressed his sympathy to the family for the 'most ghastly, traumatic experience', they had to endure.