A man from near Oswestry who died with over 30 different injuries was found to have died from natural causes.

In a hearing on Tuesday morning (November 26) at Shrewsbury Coroner’s Court, Senior Coroner John Ellery ruled that Robin Dugmore had died from natural causes.

Mr Dugmore died just before Christmas last year, and was found to have 32 injuries on his body at the time.

The St Martins resident was found dead in a property in Isherwoods Way in Wem on December 23 last year.

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Emergency medical teams were called to the address where Mr Dugmore was found in the kitchen area. CPR was administered for 15 minutes before Mr Dugmore was taken to Royal Stoke University Hospital.

His family had requested that the people who were with him at the time of his death be called forward as witnesses along with Home Office Pathologist Dr Brett Lockyer - but they did not attend despite police attempts to locate them at their address.

The court heard that one of the individuals had told police that Mr Dugmore had fallen down the stairs in the days before he died.

Mr Ellery called on Dr Lockyer to give evidence on his findings from the post-mortem

“There were 32 areas of injuries including a fractured nose,” said Dr Lockyer.

Dr Lockyer said these injuries could have come from an “assault” or from “an accidental cause” but added that the “injuries only show there was trauma not the cause”.

Dr Lockyer said he found no signs of internal bleeding or harm caused by the injuries but found a number of health issues including cirrhosis of the liver and signs of pancreatitis.

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He concluded there was only a “slight” chance that the injuries could have contributed to Mr Dugmore’s death and that it did not meet the legal threshold of being most likely cause on the balance of probabilities.

Dr Lockyer said the result of the post-mortem “more supportive of an undiagnosed disease”.

Mr Ellery told the family that he did not want to leave them with a sense of “false expectation” and that his decision “has to be based on evidence”.

Mr Ellery added that the witnesses who did not attend were not bound by law to answer questions and that he thought it unlikely that if he compelled them to testify that it would lead to any evidence that could change his judgement.

As a result Mr Ellery concluded that Mr Dugmore died of natural causes but that the specific cause was “unascertained”.