MYSTERY surrounds the death of a hard-drinking security guard - and even surrounds his correct name.

An open verdict was recorded at an inquest into the death of David Lee Mellor, who also used the surname Meller.

The 25-year-old could be identified only from dental records when his remains were found in the backyard of an empty house in central Middlesbrough, two weeks after he disappeared from his home in an adjacent street.

Because of decomposition of the body, a cause of death could not be established by a pathologist.

The night he disappeared from the home he shared with Marie Cadwaller, in Holly Street, he helped himself to a "considerable" number of anti-depressant tablets prescribed to his partner.

He was drunk from a seven-hour binge and had assaulted Ms Cadwaller, who called the police, following an argument.

Ms Cadwaller told Deputy Teesside Coroner Gordon Hetherington that, following previous tiffs, Mr Mellor would go to his brother who lived next door and return home after an hour.

Ms Cadwaller said the unemployed guard had previously cut his wrists, but the slashes were superficial.

"It was just to threaten me," she said. "He used to threaten he would jump off the Newport Bridge. When he was depressed, he used to take a bottle of cider and sit up there."

The Middlesbrough inquest heard that a police surgeon and a detective inspector thought Mr Mellor had sustained a broken ankle after jumping from a wall into the backyard and, possibly because of the amount he had drunk combined with drugs, had lain there incapacitated and died.

Mr Hetherington recorded an open verdict, saying: "There are a number of unanswered questions.''