A FATHER wept as he told how he is still trying to find answers to his son's fatal fall from a railway bridge parapet.

Steven Griffiths, 19, never regained consciousness after falling from a footbridge on to the Tees-side to York line at Eaglescliffe.

"As parents we loved and protected Steven,'' his father, David Griffiths told an inquest jury in Middlesbrough.

"To this day we don't know why Steven stood on that bridge. For two years we have questioned ourselves on everything we said and cannot find a reason for Steven to be stood on that bridge.''

He said his son, who once made headlines in a local newspaper when he and his friends jumped off a bridge into the River Tees, had put on an old pair of shoes on the day he died.

Mr Griffiths of Greenfield Drive, Eaglescliffe, said his son had been taking tablets to help him stop smoking and wondered if they had affected him.

But post-mortem tests found no trace of drugs and an "irrelevant'' amount of alcohol in his blood.

Local resident Paul Skipper said he had seen a youth "pacing up and down" on top of the bridge and thought he might have been trainspotting.

Colin Medd and his wife, Wendy, whose garden overlooks the footbridge, saw Steven's fall in August, 2000.

Mr Medd said: "He was stood with his feet together and his arms by his side, looking straight ahead. He was stood about ten seconds, then, all of a sudden, he went forward. It was like bungy jumping.''

Mr Medd, of Highfield Drive, Eaglescliffe, jumped over his fence, scrambled down to where Steven's body lay on the tracks and taking his shirt off waved down a train which managed to stop six to seven feet way.

The inquest heard that Steven had joined the Navy in February 2000, but had been homesick and had returned home.

Mr Griffiths said Steven returned withdrawn and "went into a shell". But he then attended a college computer course and got a job.

The jury returned an open verdict.