{"id":780012,"date":"2026-09-23T13:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/780012\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T13:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:42:11","slug":"inquest-into-death-of-lucy-letbys-boyfriend-opens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/780012\/","title":{"rendered":"Inquest into death of Lucy Letby&#8217;s &#8216;boyfriend&#8217; opens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is reason to suspect the death of a man labelled during a trial as the &#8220;boyfriend&#8221; of serial killer Lucy Letby was &#8220;unnatural&#8221;, the opening of an inquest has heard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dr Mark Deakin, 53, from Winsford, Cheshire, was found collapsed in his car on 24 June and was rushed to hospital where he died nine days later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Deakin worked alongside Letby, now 36, at the Countess of Chester Hospital during the period in which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-merseyside-65960514\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">she murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven others in 2015 and 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Senior Coroner for Cheshire Jacqueline Devonish scheduled a full inquest for next February.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Coroner&#8217;s officer Amanda Edgar said an inquest was being held &#8220;due to there being reason to suspect that the circumstances of Dr Deakin&#8217;s death are unnatural&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On 23 June, Cheshire Police received a call raising concerns for Deakin, who is orginally from Torquay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He was found in ill-health in his car the next day and was taken to hospital, &#8220;where he sadly died on 3 July&#8221;, Edgar told the inquest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is reason to suspect the death of a man labelled during a trial as the &#8220;boyfriend&#8221; of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-780012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}