Coroner Refuses to Rule Keith Flint Hanging a Suicide

Keith Flint hung himself — but he may not have been trying to kill himself, a coroner has ruled.

The Prodigy frontman was found dead at his home in Essex on March 4; but an inquest hearing on Wednesday was told there wasn't enough evidence to conclude it was suicide.

According to senior coroner Caroline Beasley-Murray, the fact that he had drugs and alcohol in his system showed that he may not have been intentionally trying to harm himself, and that he could have been merely "larking around" when he hung himself.

However there wasn't enough evidence to determine it was an accident either; rendering his death an "open conclusion".

She told the hearing that the 49-year-old was found by a friend hanging from a beam at his home; police did not consider it suspicious, and determined there was no third-party involvement.

The inquest heard the "Firestarter" hitmaker had unspecified amounts of cocaine, alcohol and codeine in his system at the time of death, the Guardian reported.

"I've considered suicide. To record that, I would have to have found that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Flint formed the idea and took a deliberate action knowing it would result in his death," Beasley-Murray explained. "Having regard to all the circumstances I don't find that there's enough evidence for that."

She pointed out that Flint could have been "larking around and it all went horribly wrong", but added there wasn't enough evidence for that either.

"I'm going to conclude an open conclusion," she said. "We will never quite know what was going on in his mind on that date and so that's why I'm going to record an open conclusion."

She added: "He clearly was extremely popular. He was much-loved by so many fans. It's been very touching to see that."

A 2008 study in the Annals Of Clinical Psychiatry determined that most people who commit suicide are under the influence of sedative-hypnotic drugs at the time.