FAMILY OF SCOTS RAF FIREFIGHTER FOUND HANGED IN HIS ROOM INSIST HE DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE AND BLAME POLICE FOR FAILING TO INVESTIGATE THE CASE PROPERLY. BY RON MCKAY

INVESTIGATION

IT WAS a tragedy, but a straightforward one, at least that is what the police believed. A young RAF firefighter, 24-year-old Robert Fleeting from East Kilbride, was found dead in his room on a base in Oxfordshire, having fashioned a noose from a curtain and hanged himself from the door closing mechanism. Just to wrap up the instant conclusion there were suicide notes, albeit scrawled and chaotic, addressed to his family and scattered around the room.

The circumstances surrounding the death also seemed clear. On the night before, Saturday, September 3, 2011, Robert and some of his colleagues from RAF Benson went out for the night in nearby Henley, where they were joined by medics from the base. There was drink taken but according to those that were there Robert danced, appeared to be happy and was not drunk.

The next day, Sunday, Robert was not due on shift until later in the afternoon, but when he did not turn up for an early lunch two of his friends went looking for him. They knocked on his door but got no reply. The room was on the ground floor, they then went round to his window and found the curtains half-drawn. Through the window, according to their statements to the police, they could see a made-up bed and concluded it had not been slept in.

The two then drove around to look for Robert and then, joined by a third friend, they tried the shower room and the toilets before returning to the bed- room, trying to open the door, which gave only two inches, indicating that it was blocked. One of them then recalled a small window of the room being open, so the three returned to the other side of the building, where one of them climbed on another’s knee, pulling back the curtain, which is then that Robert’s body was seen hanging behind the door.

Here the procedures, the investigation, become, at best, extremely sloppy. A doctor serving with the air ambulance is instructed to attend with two paramedics. He later testifies that he could tell just by looking through the window that Robert was dead. An RAF corporal arrives on the scene, he and a paramedic clamber through the window leaving muddy footprints on the sill, but rather than immediately cutting down Robert they collect notes from the floor and put them on top of their muddy prints.

Shortly after, officers from Thames Valley police arrived at the scene and began to take statements. A torn green T-shirt is found in the room, along with broken scissors, and the later speculation is that Robert may have tried to cut up the shirt to form a ligature before resorting to the curtain, and that the heavy boots of those coming through the window shattered the scissors.

Throughout their search, starting at approximately 11.30am, Robert’s colleagues had been phoning his mobile phone, which on each occasion went unanswered. About three hours later the missing phone was returned by a medic we will call Ray (still serving in the RAF), who had been on the previous evening’s jaunt to Henley. Belatedly he handed it over to the investigators.

In his statement to police Ray claimed that he had quarrelled with Robert the previous night, had called him a “dickhead,” but they had made up on return to the base, where he’d then invited Robert back to his room for a drink. There was no independent corroboration of this meeting and no forensic examination of the room.

Over a couple of beers Robert had allegedly told Ray he was having trouble with his dad, Charlie, but he did not seemed stressed, rather chilledout. About 3.30am, according to the statement, Robert left, saying he had to work next day. It had all been, according to Ray, totally uneventful.

However, forty-three days later Ray dramatically changed his statement, giving a radically different version of events, based on information he had been given about Robert’s post-mortem examination – information that his parents had not yet been given.

“Rob had not had as much as me and was slightly less drunk,” he now stated,