A HOMELESS man found dead in a public toilet last year had been left there by police to “sober up”, after paramedics sent him away without giving him proper medical checks.

Eugeniusz Niedziolko was found dead in the public toilets at Lush House car park, next to Queen Elizabeth Gardens, on February 14, 2017.

An inquest into his death this week heard that in the hours before his death, Mr Niedziolko had been assessed by police officers and paramedics, but despite records of the night showing he was found “in a pool of his own urine, freezing cold” and “not alert and barely conscious” a decision was made not to take him to a place of safety.

Police were called to a block of flats at Mill Road Mews just before 2am, after a resident complained that a drunk man was making noise in the communal corridors.

Mr Niedziolko, aged 40, was found in an upstairs landing slumped on his side and did not immediately respond to the officers.

PC Benjamin Brewster (now Detective Constable) told the hearing at Salisbury Coroner’s Court: “It was the most drunk I had seen someone for a long time.”

He said Mr Niedziolko “didn’t respond to me shaking him at all” and that it was only “the fourth or fifth time” of being spoken to by officers that the man sat up and looked at them.

PC Brewster and PC Karl Baldwin found Mr Niedziolko with “a very large rucksack”, a bottle of gin with a security tag on, which they believed could have been stolen, a supermarket basket containing food and alcohol and a “large television” in a box.

He was wearing a Sainsbury’s employee’s fleece, and a badge bearing the name ‘Sam’.

The officers moved Polish Mr Niedziolko to the outside of the building and called an ambulance at about 2.44am, as they could “not get any sense out of him” because he did not speak English.

In the call, PC Brewster said: “I don’t know whether there’s something else that’s wrong with him, or if it’s just because he’s drunk” and the operator responded that it was a “high priority”.

An ambulance crew arrived about ten minutes later, but PC Brewster said he did not see them carry out any physical checks on Mr Niedziolko during the 15 minutes they were with him.

Senior Coroner David Ridley asked paramedic Lee Martin why he had not completed or recorded results of a mandatory checklist including Mr Niedziolko’s pulse, blood pressure and temperature.

Mr Martin said he had carried out “a visual assessment”, but Mr Ridley said: “How can you visually assess someone’s pulse or blood pressure?”

He asked the paramedic: “Should you have carried out these observations, yes or no?” and Mr Martin said he should have.

Mr Ridley added: “If you had taken him into the ambulance you would have seen he’d wet himself, but also for someone’s dignity, is an examination on the street appropriate?”

During the assessment Mr Niedziolko was heard saying “alcoholic”, “hospital” and “detox”, before trying to climb into the ambulance, with PC Brewster adding: “From what I could see, he wanted to go to hospital.”

Mr Martin also said it was “a factor” in the decision not to take Mr Niedziolko to hospital that Salisbury’s emergency department was busy that night and “the nurse in charge would have taken a dim view of us taking a patient who appears to be drunk to hospital.”

Addressing the inquest in tears, Mr Martin added: “It wasn’t because we were being callous, or careless, or we didn’t want to get Eugeniusz the help, because we did.

“It’s not like we turned up, stood there with our hands in our pockets, said ‘see you later’ and left, we really did try our best.”

Neither the police nor the paramedics asked him how much he had had to drink or when his last drink was, and PC Brewster said officers “don’t get specific training” about the physical effects of alcohol.

PC Brewster said he and PC Baldwin “had a conversation about what we were going to do with him”, and had discussed booking a hotel room before discovering Mr Niedziolko, homeless but living in Chard, Somerset, had no money.

The paramedics left at 3.12am. Less than five minutes later, the officers had left Mr Niedziolko at the public toilets where he would be found the next day.

In a call to the control room at 3.17am, PC Brewster said: “We didn’t have any option, we have just dropped him off at the toilets of Lush House car park, of all places.

“He’s going to sleep in the toilets until he’s sober enough to think about getting a train home, that’s all we can do at the moment.”

Mr Ridley asked if PC Brewster had “done anything like this before” and he replied: “Yes, we have left them somewhere,” before confirming he had no plans to go back and check on Mr Niedziolko.

Mr Ridley listed more than ten alternative options the officers could have considered, including taking Mr Niedziolko to hospital themselves, arresting him or requesting emergency accommodation from Wiltshire Council and Alabare.

PC Brewster said he did not arrest Mr Niedziolko as “I don’t think this chap would appreciate waking up in Melksham custody 45 minutes away.

“Back in the day there were four times as many police officers, there was custody in Salisbury. Now you have to think a lot more about whether arrest is the best option.”

Senior coroner David Ridley said it had since been “discovered” that an agreement dating back to 2009 existed between Wiltshire Police and South Western Ambulance Service about what to do with highly intoxicated people, but none of the responders that night had ever been made aware of it.

PC Brewster said: “It would have been vital if we had had knowledge of that at the time.

“Even now we have never seen that agreement”.

A post mortem found Mr Niedziolko had 434mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, more than five times the drink drive limit, when he died.

The inquest continues.