A TEENAGER hanged himself in an alleyway behind Leigh police station, an inquest was told.

Sixteen years-old Jamie Lovell was found hanging from the drawstring of his tracksuit bottoms.

He had been drinking and his mother, Wendy Burgess, told a Bolton inquest that Jamie had gone to meet friends on the Plank Lane estate in Leigh at about 7.30pm.

He returned to his mothers 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 from his mothers house 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 which he had been arrested for.

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

The teenager, who was unemployed, was found hanging from metal railings in an alleyway off 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."

After the hearing Jamies father, plasterer Peter Lovell, said he had been unaware until the inquest that his son had been at the police station on the night he died.