8:50am Thursday 21st January 2010
By Will Carson
A POPULAR Hampshire postman took his life by jumping off the Itchen Bridge, an inquest heard.
The body of 25-year-old Jamie Doidge was pulled from the River Itchen in the early hours of December 8.
Southampton Coroner's Court was told Mr Doidge had recently broken up with his boyfriend who had dropped him at Bursledon train station on the day he died.
But instead of catching a train home, the former Bridgemary Community School pupil booked in to a hotel room at the Premier Inn in Park Gate and wrote a letter to his family and friends apologising for taking his own life.
He then caught the train to Woolston in Southampton and walked to the Itchen Bridge before jumping to his death.
Pathologist Sanjay Jogai said a post mortem examination had shown Mr Doidge died from drowning.
Coroner Keith Wiseman recorded a verdict that Mr Doidge, of St Michael's Gardens, Fareham, took his own life.
Following his death, Mr Doidge's parents Angela and Chris, from Gosport, said he went "out of his way to help people" and loved music and dance.
They added that they wished he had been able to talk his problems through with somebody before the tragedy.
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