30174/2WILTSHIRE TIMES EXCLUSIVE: A GRIEVING mother has warned of the deadly effects of alcohol after an inquest heard that drink killed her daughter.

Christine Linden, 56, said she would never forget her daughter Lita Willcox who died in Warminster in September, aged 32.

Miss Wilcox, a mother-of-four from Trowbridge, was found slumped in her £18-a-night room in the Farmers Hotel surrounded by empty bottles of wine and vodka.

Her death has led her mum to warn others of the dangers of binge drinking.

Mrs Linden said: "I hope that if anything comes from this it is that other people realise the dangers of alcohol.

"I spoke to Lita the week before she died and she told me she had kicked the drugs, I didn't realise that she had turned to the bottle instead.

"It is just such a sad world we live in that things happen like this."

Mrs Linden said people need to think before they go out on all-night drinking sessions.

She said: "The thing is, it could happen to anybody if they go out on a night drinking and have too much.

"People don't realise the dangers of drinking because it's seen as a sociable thing but it can be just as deadly as drugs.

"We have been waiting for a long time to know exactly what happened so in a way this has given us some sort of closure."

Clare Fuller, a pathologist at Salisbury District Hospital, carried out a post mortem examination and ruled that Miss Willcox died from a cardiac arrhythmia, which is a disturbance in the regular heartbeat.

Dr Fuller said: "In keeping with three days in a fairly warm environment we cannot be certain of the exact cause of death.

"There weren't any drugs found, but the alcohol level was 185mg per millilitre of blood.

This isn't tremendously high but it is high enough to cause obvious signs of drunkenness.

"The liver was very fatty and you get that in people that have taken a large amount of alcohol.

"We cannot be sure of the exact cause of death because of the time between when she died and when she was found. One way of describing it could be like a cot death in a grown-up."

Coroner David Masters said on the balance of possibility he agreed with Dr Fuller's verdict of cardiac arrhythmia.

"Although she was found on September 3 she died much earlier, possibly three days before," he said.

"Clearly, in light of the history I have heard, she had been drinking and possibly binge drinking."

The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.