DETECTIVES have ended their investigation of a drugs related death, an inquest heard yesterday.

Michael Peart, 20, was found dead at a friend's house in Easington, County Durham in April.

The Hartlepool coroner heard that police opened an investigation after hearing concerns that heroin taken by Mr Peart was part of a rogue batch.

That was later discounted, but Coroner Malcolm Donnelly also heard that police had looked into suggestions that Mr Peart, a telecommunications officer who lived at Murton, County Durham, with his grandfather, was not a heroin-user.

Detective Sergeant Graham Fletcher, of Seaham police, told the inquest that two other people with Mr Peart at the time of his death said he had injected himself.

Dr Mark Egan, specialist pathologist at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary, carried out a post-mortem examination and found minor grazes and bruises on Mr Peart's body.

However, none of them could have caused his death and they could have been sustained in the course of every day life.

He found that Mr Peart had taken heroin, as well as benzodrine and, at an earlier date, cocaine.

The drugs, he said, led Mr Peart, to lose consciousness, his lungs to become infected and filled with fluid. This eventually led to his death.

Summing up, Mr Donnelly said that Mr Peart, of Church Lane North, Murton, had died in John Street, in Easington. He said the evidence led to a specific verdict of non-dependent abuse of drugs.