Army

Deepcut: Pte Cheryl James' Boyfriend Gives Evidence

A boyfriend of Private Cheryl James has been giving evidence in the inquest into her death. The 18 year old was found with a gunshot wound to the head in 1995.

Simeon Carr-Minns told the coroner they had a happy relationship, but that he had just found out she was seeing someone behind his back a few days before she died.

He described how he "broke down in tears" when he heard that she had died on duty at the Deepcut Army base more than 20 years ago.

Carr-Minns was a young Royal Engineer and had been in a relationship with the 18-year-old for around two months when she was found dead in a copse near the barracks' Princess Way gate in November 1995.

The inquest into her death heard he and Pte James had discussed marriage and that they made plans for him to meet her parents.

But in the days before she broke off her relationship with Mr Carr-Minns, known at the time as Jim, as she was seeing another man, Pte Paul Wilkinson.

Mr Carr-Minns told Surrey Coroners Court in Woking how he came to the barracks to plead with her to stay with him.

On Saturday November 25, two days before she died, he confronted her at Deepcut's Naafi bar to ask if it was true she was seeing someone else.

Asked if the conversation was heated, he said:

"Slightly impassioned, maybe, but not raised voices. It was never that. But I would have been quite anxious about it. I was never angry, more upset."

That evening he found her with Pte Wilkinson on a bed in a disused block looking "dishevelled".

But the following evening she and Mr Carr-Minns had sex while they were at a block "party", at which Pte Wilkinson was also present.

She had been drinking and her mood was up and down, Mr Carr-Minns told the inquest. He said:

"She would be laughing and joking one minute and quite aggressive or sad or angry the next minute. She seemed to go from one state to the other. I had not seen her like this before."

He eventually walked her back to her own block - during which she stopped off at a guard room to "have it out" with a colleague over something - and he left to go to his own barracks between 11pm and midnight after she had asked him to come back and visit her the following day.

But on the morning of November 27 he received a phone call and later learned Pte James had died.

The news left him "absolutely devastated", and he "collapsed" in the phone box.

He told police in 2002 that "at no time" had Pte James ever indicated that she might kill herself. He said at the time: "I do not know why she would have done such a thing."

Previously in the inquest, evidence was read from a 2002 review by Surrey Police of the original investigation into Pte James death, in which it was suggested Mr Carr-Minns "should be considered a suspect".

But coroner Brian Barker QC said he was not under any suspicion, and the family did not think him a suspect. He told Mr Carr-Minns:

"The family have indicated in open court that it is not their position that you had any involvement in Ms James' death."

Alison Foster QC, representing the James family, was also prevented by the coroner from taking further a line of questioning regarding a previous alleged sexual incident that involved Pte James and an unnamed person.