HEDGE-FEUD CORONER WARNS ABOUT DANGER OF CANNABIS

A coroner yesterday warned of the dangers of smoking cannabis after a
man addicted to the drug shot dead his neighbour.

Robert Dickenson, 52, shot George Wilson four times after a feud which
culminated in a row about the size of the hedge separating their
properties. When police searched Dickenson's home they found cannabis
plants and a hydroponic system, which he used to grow them in his attic.

The inquest heard that he smoked five to 10 cannabis cigarettes per
day. Dickenson hanged himself after being charged with murder.

Roger Atkinson, holding an inquest into both deaths, said it was
"undoubtedly the worst case I've come across of somebody under the
influence of cannabis".

The Lincoln coroner added: "I have stressed that cannabis is not a
harmless drug, and this demonstrates, if nothing else, how devastating
its effects can be."

The inquest heard that the pair, who lived next door to each other in
Webster Close, Lincoln, had been involved in a dispute stretching back
several years.

The final straw came when, in order to antagonise Mr Wilson, 66, he
hacked down the privet hedge between the properties, but which
belonged to his neighbour, to within inches of the ground.

The pair argued about it for a fortnight before, in June last year,
they got into a scuffle on the front lawn. Dickenson went into his
house to fetch a handgun and shot Mr Wilson on his own doorstep.

He later confessed to a prison psychiatrist: "Something in the back of
my mind told me to just get him. He should have been shot dead a long
time ago."

After a three-hour siege, armed police broke into Dickenson's house to
find him semi-conscious on his kitchen floor, with his revolver and a
half-smoked cannabis cigarette lying on a nearby kitchen top.

After the shooting Mr Wilson was rushed to Lincoln County Hospital but
died after suffering four bullet wounds, one of them a fatal shot to
his head.

Dickenson was charged with murder and placed in a single cell at
Lincoln Prison's medical centre, and was found hanged a week later.

At the end of four days of evidence an inquest jury returned verdicts
that Mr Wilson was unlawfully killed and Dickenson had killed himself
while on remand.