Man killed himself after suicides film

From the archive, first published Wednesday 6th Dec 2006.

A 26-year-old man hanged himself with Sellotape in a park after watching a film about people killing themselves.

Mariusz Pozniak, a Polish national living in Bradford, was found dead in the Prince of Wales Park in Bingley on Wednesday, July 12, an inquest heard yesterday,

Coroner Roger Whittaker told Mr Pozniak's girlfriend Katarzyna Kotynska and friend Daniel Wasilczyk, who are living and working in England, that he had been suffering from serious depression in the weeks before his death.

Mr Pozniak, of Duckworth Grove, Bradford, had been living in the city since June, 2005, and worked at Damart in Steeton.

Mr Wasilczyk told the hearing that in the weeks before his death he had started to hear voices telling him they wanted to kill him.

He said: "He was down again; he had watched a film about people killing themselves. And he told me he needed help.

"I said I would take him to a doctor who would help him. Then we thought about a holiday we would soon be going on to Poland."

Mr Pozniak had gone missing the day before he was found. He was going home from work on the train with his friends when he went to the toilet. When the train got into Bradford station, he had vanished.

His friends called him on his mobile phone but he told them that he needed time to think and he would see them at home later.

The next day he had not arrived home, so his girlfriend put up missing-person posters at Bradford's Forster Square station.

He was found later that day hanging from a tree in the park. He had hanged himself using two-inch Sellotape.

Miss Kotynska, who had known Mr Pozniak for more than two years in England and in Poland, said: "During the time I had known him he didn't have medical problems, but in June, 2006, he started to have problems.

"He said he was worthless, no one wanted him and he was a burden. But he told me that - although he didn't value himself - he would do nothing like this."

Recording a verdict of suicide, Mr Whittaker concluded that Mr Pozniak had intended to take his life as he had had been suffering from depression.

e-mail: ali.davies@bradford.newsquest.co.uk