Dunfermline: Corrie McKeague inquest hears airman was a 'nightmare on the drink'

Corrie McKeague, from Dunfermline, was 23 when he went missing in the early hours of September 24, 2016 after a night out in Bury St Edmonds.

The airman was stationed at RAF Honington, more than eight miles from the Suffolk town.

No trace has been found since a last sighting on CCTV at 3.25am of him entering a service area behind a Greggs store, and Suffolk Police believe he climbed into a bin which was then tipped into a waste lorry.

The inquest in Ipswich heard from his father, Martin McKeague, who said in a statement: “Corrie was a happy child – however there were major events that shaped Corrie’s life.

“When Corrie was 10 years old Nicola (Urquhart, Corrie’s mother) and I had separated.

"At the age of 15, when he was first to find the body of his friend who had just been killed on a train line, I believe Corrie developed a significant binge-drinking problem.

“In his teenage years that impacted his emotional wellbeing and mired many of his relationships.”

He said that his last contact with his son was on his birthday, September 16, “when I sent him a message to wish him a happy birthday and I sent him money”.

He said the death of his son’s friend “was a terrible shock for a 15-year-old boy to suffer, and one I don’t think he ever truly got over”.

Mr McKeague continued: “I don’t believe Corrie was ever suicidal. This has been a heart-breaking tragedy.”

Nicola Urquhart, in a statement read to the inquest, said one of her son’s “very close female friends was hit by a train and killed instantly”.

“This event had a huge impact on Corrie,” she said.

She said her son had started to train as a hairdresser, then as a PE teacher, before joining the RAF.

While he had been prescribed anti-depressants in the past, she said that he was “back to his usual happy self” by 2015.

Ms Urquhart said her son “regularly lost his phone or wallet on nights out” but “was never aggressive with or without alcohol”.

“There was nothing to suggest Corrie had any problems or concerns around the time of his disappearance,” she said.

“Despite what’s in the press, as far as I’m aware Corrie had never slept in a bin nor had he ever climbed into a bin to sleep.”

Suffolk’s senior coroner, Nigel Parsley, said Mr McKeague, who had served in the RAF for three years, drank a “significant amount of alcohol during the evening” of September 23.

He said Mr McKeague was asked to leave Flex nightclub and “was seen on a number of occasions on CCTV”.

He said that at 3.25am on September 24, CCTV captured Mr McKeague entering a horseshoe-shaped area in Brentgovel Street.

This was the last time he was seen and known to be alive, Mr Parsley told jurors.

He said police investigations and searches failed to locate Mr McKeague., there has been no contact with family and no financial transactions that can be linked to him.

The inquest heard from a young woman who said the airman mentioned walking home from Bury St Edmunds to his base.

Alicia Gallagher first met Mr McKeague on a night out in December 2015, when she was with her sister at Flex nightclub.

They left around 4.30am and she said: “We offered him some money for a taxi – he did mention a base but he didn’t say which base it was.

“He said he walked… one time which my sister wasn’t happy with.

“In the end I think he just wandered off.”

She continued: “He said he had done it before, which I remember as we talked about it in the taxi home.

“It’s something I remember from that night as I thought ‘that’s so far, I wouldn’t do that’, but then I’m not a young, fit male either.”

The inquest heard from Paul Robb, who also served in the RAF with Mr McKeague and said that his best friend had slept under bin bags on a previous night out, using them “almost like a blanket.

He told the inquest Mr McKeague said he “slept under some bin bags” following a night out in Lichfield, Staffordshire, in 2014.

“I can’t remember if he described them being full of rubbish, outside a coffee shop or something like that,” he said.

“Round the back where the bin area was. He described using them almost like a blanket to stay warm.”

He said that on a previous night out at a Nandos restaurant Mr McKeague “downed a whole bottle of red wine in 17 seconds”, adding: “He had a capability of doing things like that.”

In his witness statement, Mr Robb detailed how his friend had previously passed out through drink and awoken the following morning in the toilets of a McDonald’s restaurant in Bury St Edmunds, and on a separate occasion fell asleep on a bench outside a Tesco store in the town.

He said that on a stag do in Liverpool in August 2016, Mr McKeague climbed up a drainpipe and through a window of the accommodation where he was staying, getting into a room that was not his and falling asleep there.

In his witness statement, Mr Robb said: “Corrie had always been extreme with his drinking and there were no half measures with Corrie.”

He described Mr McKeague’s mental state as “up and down”, adding: “He had periods of highs and periods of lows.”

He said his friend had previously received counselling through a mental health team that assists the RAF, and had previously been prescribed anti-depressants.

The airman's former line manager, Sergeant Ross Stevenson, said: “He’s a friendly lad, cheeky I would say, but he was a good laugh. He was capable, he just needed channelling, I would say.”

In his witness statement he said that Mr McKeague was a “nightmare on the drink” and “he liked to be steaming”.

Sgt Stevenson said that on a previous occasion he had seen Mr McKeague walking along a road, one mile from the airbase, at around 10am and stopped his vehicle to give him a lift.

“Corrie was walking along the verge of the road and still wearing the clothes from the night before,” Sgt Stevenson said, adding: “Presumably he had been on a night out.”

He said that Mr McKeague had previously asked for help with his finances, and asked for his card to be kept in a locked box for a month.

“He came to us asking for help as he had no money for food or anything,” he said.

He said the base arranged for meal tickets for him to ensure he was fed and discussed how to pay off money he owed.

William Hook, the doorman at Flex nightclub who asked Mr McKeague to leave in the early hours of Saturday September 24, 2016 said that Mr McKeague arrived at the club between 11pm and midnight on the Friday.

He said that when he saw him later, around 1am, “he struggled to walk without holding onto anything around him – that was the point I clocked him, I suppose”.

He continued: “I said: ‘I think you’ve had enough mate, shall we go out the front?’”

The doorman said Mr McKeague co-operated and left the venue, and he described it as an “easy ejection”.

Mr Hook said: “He was a popular lad around the town, he knew a lot of people who were out, he would go round groups of people speaking to groups of people and saying hello to staff."

The inquest also heard from a bin lorry driver who said he saw a man wearing light-coloured trousers and a pink shirt, like Mr McKeague had been wearing, when he drove into the area where the missing airman was last seen on CCTV.

Martyn Thompson said that he arrived at the service area, which was the first stop on his round, at 4.19am.

He said: “I reversed up to do Greggs’s bin and, as I put the handbrake on the vehicle, I looked out of the driver’s window, that’s when I saw another individual.”

He said the man was wearing light-coloured trousers and a pink shirt, leaning against a wall and “looking at a mobile phone, as the screen was illuminated”.

“I thought ‘He’s a smartly-dressed chap, he’s been on a night out’,” Thompson said. He said he got out of the lorry to empty the Greggs bin and then did not see the man again. Thompson said he did not speak to the man.

Asked by Peter Taheri, counsel to the inquest, if he checked inside the bin before emptying it, Thompson said: “I did check the bin because me and a colleague of mine, we always had this thing with that particular job. It was over-serviced – Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

“It always had very little in it, two plastic bags.

“I would say, ‘What a (expletive) waste of time’.”

He continued: “I checked it. I lifted the lid, I can recall what was in there.”

Thompson said he looked “far enough to see three clear plastic bags”. Asked if there was anyone inside the bin, he replied: “No, there wasn’t.”

Taheri asked if Thompson gave the bin a “good enough kick to rouse anyone inside”, and Mr Thompson replied: “Absolutely, yes.”

The inquest, due to last for up to four weeks, continues.