A FORMER Alcester Grammar School student was a victim of sudden adult death syndrome, a coroner has ruled.

Matthew Ward, from Wellesbourne, left the school last summer and had completed just one term of a business studies degree at Sheffield Hallam University when he died in January.

The court heard how Matthew, 19, had been out with friends to a birthday party and the following morning when his father, John, took him a cup of tea he found him unconscious in bed.

Mr Ward tried to resuscitate his son while his wife called an ambulance. Matthew was airlifted to the Alexandra Hospital but resuscitation attempts failed.

An extensive post mortem was inconclusive, though Dr Richard Carr confirmed there were no traces of drugs and only moderate traces of alcohol in Matthew's body.

He also said that as there had been a suspicion that the teenager may have been allergic to blue food colouring, and had had a Blue Lagoon cocktail the night before, he had sent tissue samples for forensic tests to a Manchester hospital.

But Dr Carr added the most likely reason for Mathew's death was that he suffered a cardiac arrhythmia, a disturbance of the natural rhythm of the heart, though its cause is unknown.

Warwickshire coroner Michael Coker said: "Several times a year in the county we experience the death of a young person where, upon examination, there does not appear to be any reason why they should have died.

"In these circumstances the assumption tends to be that something has occurred which has resulted in the heart stopping and not re-starting, as if someone had turned a light off and it hadn't re-connected."

Mr Coker recorded a verdict of natural death, caused by sudden unidentified adult death syndrome.