Drugs killed ex-gym owner

From the Swindon Advertiser, first published Friday 17th Aug 2001.

POLICE have launched an investigation following the death of a former Swindon gym owner who injected himself with Ministry of Defence morphine.

At an inquest in Chippenham, Wiltshire coroner David Masters heard that Paul Robert Borresen, 38, of Moons Leaze Farm, Braydon, near Purton, died at home on January 30.

Mr Borresen, a bodybuilding and fitness enthusiast who wrote two books on the subject, ran a business advising fitness fans and supplying vitamins and food supplements, the inquest heard on Wednesday.

But the hearing was told the father-of-two also had a cocaine habit, used anabolic steroids and developed a morphine addiction after a serious back injury.

His wife, Carol Borresen, of Loyalty Road, Chippenham, told the inquest the couple married in 1984 when he was running a Swindon gym.

In the early 1990s they moved to Manchester where Mr Borresen ran his supplements business and wrote a bodybuilding book.

At this time he started taking steroids, she said, and he took cocaine to cope with depression. He broke two bones in his back in 1997 and relied on high doses of prescribed morphine to help him cope with the pain.

Mrs Borresen said she was aware he was taking cocaine and additional morphine unlawfully, before his death, using injecters from MoD supplies. The evening before his death he had injected morphine and taken cocaine.

The next day he was still asleep at 9.30am and she was unable to wake him. She checked on him throughout the morning but at 1.30pm discovered he had stopped breathing. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him without success.

A post mortem revealed numerous injection marks on his legs, hands and left arm. A toxicology report revealed his blood contained very high levels of morphine and cocaine, as well as a high therapeutic level of Diazepam.

Pathology consultant Dr Alan Anscombe said the combination of drugs would have interfered with his breathing, causing a coma and death.

Det Con Andrew Aves, of Wootton Bassett police, confirmed the morphine injecters were from MoD supplies and said the source was being investigated.

Mr Masters recorded a verdict of death from non dependent abuse of drugs in exceptional excess.

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