NATIONAL EXCLUSIVE

POLICE have launched an investigation after it emerged a young rugby player who was paralysed in a training session travelled to Switzerland and took his own life.

Dan James died last month in a Swiss clinic. His parents Mark and Julie travelled with their 23-year-old son from their home in Sinton Green, near Worcester, and have since been questioned by police.

Mr James looked destined for a career in professional rugby before a scrum collapsed on top of him while he was training with Nuneaton Rugby Football Club in March 2007.

The collapse dislocated his spine and left him paralysed from the chest down. After the accident Mr James had several operations to fuse two vertebrae in his neck and spent eight months re-habilitating in hospital before returning home.

His parents have declined to comment about their son’s death.

But speaking to your Worcester News in April, Mrs James said: “It was so sudden.

“We had no build-up to it, it just happened. We got a phone call saying Dan had a bit of a knock at rugby. That was it.”

Mr James attended the Chantry High School and Worcester’s Royal Grammar School before studying construction engineering management at Loughborough University.

He had played for the minis and juniors section of Worcester Rugby Club, Kidderminster Carolians, Stourbridge, Midlands and England Under 16s.

An inquest into Mr James’s death was opened on Friday, September 19, and adjourned for reports.

A medical cause of death is yet to be ascertained, but the circumstances of his death were recorded by the coroner as: “Deceased travelled to Switzerland with a view to ending his own life. He was admitted to a clinic where he died.”

Detective Inspector Adrian Todd, of south Worcestershire police, said: “A police investigation is ongoing and officers have spoken with a man and a woman in connection with the case.

“A report will later be submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service and an inquest into the death will take place in due course.”

In the last six years, 100 British people have travelled abroad to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland and had an assisted death.

To date nobody has been prosecuted for accompanying a loved one to die.

The law in Britain makes it an offence to assist suicide, a charge which carries a maximum of 14 years in prison.

There have been several high profile cases in this country where people have sought for clarification in the law.

Campaigners are currently awaiting the latest High Court decision, which they hope will clarify the meaning of “assisting suicide”.

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