A successful businessman jumped six floors from an office window to his death after visiting websites that recommended methods of committing suicide.

IT manager Jeremy Brooks, 32, of Harewood Road, Gosforth, Newcastle, had been suffering from depression, when he took his own life on June 14 last year.

In the weeks leading up to his death, he carried out thousands of Internet searches on suicide, and accessed sites giving advice on different methods.

Mr Brooks ran the UK branch of Canadian IT company CBL from the second floor of the Centre for Advanced Industry, in Coble Dene, North Shields.

He lived in a flat above his 82-year-old grandmother, Victoria Manning, in Gosforth, and had one brother, Daniel, 30, and three half brothers, Robin, John and David.

An inquest at North Tyneside Magistrates' Court heard that Mr Brooks was deeply depressed and owed £50,000 on his credit cards.

Police found he had looked at websites that offered advice on painless ways of committing suicide, on how to commit suicide by jumping, and how to make suicide look like an accident.

Security guard Graham Scott said he had seen Mr Brooks in the office building at about 7.30pm on June 14 and described his behaviour as normal. Mr Brooks sometimes slept at his office.

At 9.30pm, as he went about his rounds, Mr Scott found Mr Brooks face down on the pavement outside the office block. He called for an ambulance but Mr Brooks was already dead.

Coroner Eric Armstrong recorded a verdict of suicide.