An inquest heard how a woman battled in vain to save her husband after finding him engulfed in flames in their garden.

Lesley Whitaker said she used towels to try to put out the flames coming from the head of her 50-year-old husband David. "All I could hear was the screaming - it was like he was smouldering," she told the Bradford hearing on Tuesday.

An open verdict was recorded on Mr Whitaker, who died last October at his Grange Road, Riddlesden, home.

Coroner Roger Whittaker said there was insufficient evidence to prove he had intended taking his own life.

Mrs Whitaker described how she had returned from the cinema with their eight-year-old son to find her husband in the kitchen preparing a meal for them all.

He was annoyed that a kitchen drawer had stuck and that the gravy was not right. He then stormed out of the house saying the meal had all gone wrong.

Earlier that day he had talked about having a bonfire to burn some garden rubbish, so she thought he had gone to one of their two garden huts.

He came back into the house and took a box of matches from a kitchen drawer, before going out again.

Mrs Whitaker said that when she went out there seemed to be a big light at the bottom of the garden and it looked as though her husband was starting a bonfire.

It was only when she got closer that she realised he was on fire.

Station Officer Ian Purcell, of West Yorkshire fire service, said several spent matches and a four-litre plastic container of paraffin were found near Mr Whitaker's body.

His conclusion was that Mr Whitaker had used the matches to light his clothing once he had spilled paraffin over himself.

"I can't say that the fire was deliberately lit - it could have been an accidental fire," he added.

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