A YOUNG woman who leapt to her death from the walls of a Gwent castle was suffering from schizophrenia, an inquest heard yesterday.

Gwent coroner David Bowen said Kate Tucson, from St George's Crescent, Abergavenny, took her own life after years of mental illness.

Ms Tucson's parents were in Newport's Civic Centre yesterday to give evidence and hear the coroner's verdict.

Ms Tucson, who was 22, had just been released from hospital having taken an overdose of anti-depressants when she fell 100 ft from Raglan Castle.

Her father, Ernest Moore, told the court that for at least six years Kate had been suffering from schizophrenia with symptoms that included depression and voices that told her to kill herself.

On April 10 Ms Tucson was admitted to Abergavenny's Nevill Hall Hospital having taken an overdose of anti-depressants.

She was released and returned to her parents' house in Abergavenny. Mr Moore said: "She had tried to take her own life on three previous occasions, each time by taking an overdose.

"She came home on April 13 after being released from hospital, she told her mother and I that she needed space and she went to bed.

"She seemed calm and she said she was taking a cab to her boyfriend's. Then the police came and told us what had happened. If I thought that she might harm herself I would never have left her on her own."

A tourist at Raglan Castle saw Ms Tucson sitting on a wall of the great tower and then jumping to her death 100 ft below.

PC Peter Prosser was quickly on the scene and said in a statement: "I saw a young female lying at the foot of the great tower with her head inclined to the right, I called an ambulance but when I approached it was clear she had passed away."

A post-mortem examination at Nevill Hall Hospital, where Ms Tucson was born, revealed she had died from multiple injuries.

The coroner recorded a verdict that she took her own life.