Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Worker finds body in toilets
A security guard has told how he discovered a man dead in a public toilet just hours before panto stars switched on Canterbury’s Christmas lights.
Steve West was in Iron Bar Lane preparing to erect metal barriers ahead of last Thurs- day night’s festivities in the city centre when he was alerted to an emergency in the toilets opposite the cab rank at Canterbury Lane.
The 40-year-old, who works for St Dunstan’s-based Akon Security, entered the building to find a man slumped inside one of the cubicles.
Steve said: “We were sorting out the barriers when someone came and asked whether we could go up to the toilets because of a problem in them.
“We got in there to find someone inside one of the cubicles. The door was locked and we couldn’t into it.
“But I looked over the top and the guy was slumped down over the toilet. He was very pale and his lips were blue. He looked dead already.”
Paramedics were called and attempted to revive the man on the floor of the toilets.
Police have subsequently confirmed that a 34-year-old man – believed to be from Ashford – was pronounced dead at just after 2.40pm.
Steve, who lives in Canterbury Road, Whitstable, says he and his colleagues guarded the toilets to stop people getting in.
He went on: “I just feel really sorry for the guy’s family. They have lost someone close to them.
“We are all human and you don’t like seeing things like that. A colleague of mine who was with me was quite affected by it.
“Working as doormen we often have to deal with people in distress, but whatever the situation we know we have to act – and this was no different.”
Police are not treating the death as suspicious and have passed the case to the east Kent coroner.
The man is not the first to die in the Canterbury Lane toilets. Emma Slater, 37, died from heroin poisoning in September 2014 just months after having a baby.