A man with a history of suicide attempts and depression killed himself by jumping from a signal gantry on to a railway line, despite a policeman's desperate efforts to talk him down, writes Emma Henry.

Nigel Shurmer, 30, of Kingfishers, Grove, died of multiple injuries at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, on February 5, shortly after jumping from the 20ft signal gantry near Denchworth Bridge, Grove, an inquest in Oxford heard. Police were called to the scene just after 3.30pm, after Grove resident Rachael Branton, of Mandarin Place, saw him perched on the gantry while she was out walking.

Pc Nigel Eighteen, of Wantage Police, who tried to talk him down, said Mr Shurmer paced about, before sitting down on the gantry's walkway with his legs over the edge, drinking from a cider bottle.

He said: "I did what I could to talk him down he was just not co-operative at all. He refused to come down and wouldn't really give a good reason for it." Then, he said: "He deliberately launched himself off the gantry, toppling forwards as he fell."

Mr Shurmer's sister Heather Hughes, also of Kingfishers, Grove, said: "He'd been seen on the gantry before in similar circumstances.

She said she was 'exceptionally worried' about him when she talked to him the day before he died, as he was very withdrawn.

Mr Shurmer's GP, Quentin Livingstone, from Wantage, said in a statement Mr Shurmer had taken overdoses on four occasions since May 1992, and also had a problem with alcohol. A post mortem by pathologist Dr Peter Millard showed he was more than three times the legal limit for driving when he died.

The coroner's jury returned a verdict of suicide.