MYSTERY shrouds the death of a new father who hanged himself two days after his birthday.

John Robson's father, Paul Robson, told Teesside Coroner Michael Sheffield his son had no worries, concerns or history of depression.

"John was the last person you would expect to be like that. He was strong," said Mr Robson.

Nicola Nunn, John Robson's girlfriend and mother of the couple's three-week-old baby, said the couple had no quarrel or disagreement.

Forensic tests showed Mr Robson had less than a recreational doseage of a cocaine-based drug and a no trace of alcohol in his blood when he died.

Yet an inquest in Middlesbrough heard yesterday that the 24-year-old unemployed labourer selectively stripped photograph albums of family snaps, neatly arranging them in a row on the top of a kitchen unit, before hanging himself from a washing line.

Detective Inspector Lynne Richardson, of Cleveland Police, told the coroner: "It appeared to me from the way he had apparently hanged himself that he would have been able to look at those pictures in the last moments of his life."

Mr Sheffield said he had no alternative but to record a verdict that Mr Robson killed himself.

The inquest had been told that, the night before he died, both Mr Robson and Miss Nunn had returned home to Rosslare Road, Stockton, drunk after a night out and had both gone straight to sleep.