No reply from Maltese to Cornwall inquest on tourist’s Comino death

The circumstances in which a mental health worker from Bodmin, UK, died in Malta may never be known, an inquest heard.

Tim Mason drowned while on holiday on 15 June, 2015, near where two other British tourists drowned two weeks earlier. The 59-year-old drowned near the Blue Lagoon on Comino.

Mason was airlifted to hospital, where he died shortly after arrival.

Cornwall assistant coroner, Barrie van den Berg, said attempts by his office to gain information from the Maltese about exactly what had happened in relation to Mason’s death had gone without reply.

Mason’s sister, Elizabeth Purchase, told the inquest in Truro she had visited the island after her brother’s death. She said Mason was a competent and confident swimmer. “The only circumstances that I know are that Tim was pulled out of the water by lifeguards, but he was unresponsive,” she said.

“I’ve been to the island and it’s very difficult to enter the sea there. There are only a few places to do so because there are lots of rocks, so it is possible he was on a lifeguard beach.”

Purchase said she could only assume he went swimming around nearby caves, and the sea conditions deteriorated.

A post-mortem examination carried out by a pathologist concluded Mason’s cause of death was drowning and that he suffered from coronary heart disease. Van den Berg recorded an open verdict.