A TEENAGER hanged himself just hours after splitting up with his girlfriend, an inquest was told.

Jamie Lovell, aged 16, was found hanging from the drawstring of his tracksuit bottoms behind Leigh Police Station.

He had been drinking and his family told a Bolton inquest on Monday that he had been involved in a row with his 15-year-old girlfriend the previous evening.

The teenager's mother, Wendy Burgess, said Jamie had gone to meet friends on the Plank Lane estate at about 7.30pm.

He returned to his mother's house at about 11.30pm and was uptight because he had been told by his older sister, with whom he usually lived, that he could not stay out. He walked away and was next seen at Leigh Police Station where he told a counter assistant that he had come to "hand himself in" over an alleged assault.

The assistant told Jamie that she would pass on a message to officers after finding he was not on a national database of wanted individuals.

The unemployed teenager was found hanging from metal railings in an alleyway close to the police station on Brunswick Street at 12.25am.

A post-mortem examination found he was two-and-a-half times over the legal drink-drive limit.

Recording an open verdict, deputy coroner Alan Walsh said: "There were things controlling him that night that nobody here is party to and without all the answers it is not possible to reach a complete conclusion."