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EXCLUSIVE: Court victory for family as new inquest is ordered for Jeremiah Duggan
A High Court judge has ended seven years of torment for a Golders Green mother granting a new inquest into her son's death.
Erica Duggan was at long last granted a new inquest into the death of her son Jeremiah, who was found aged 22 dead on a German motorway in 2003.
Police at the scene dismissed it as suicide, a young man who threw himself into the rush of oncoming traffic to be hit by two different cars.
But Mrs Duggan and her family have always questioned that theory - given the night before her Sorbonne educated son had called her to say he was in "big trouble" before the line was suddenly cut off.
He had travelled to Germany from his Paris home to attend an anti-war conference.
The conference was held at the Schiller Institute espousing the views of the American radical, Lyndon LaRouche.
An inquest into his death at Hornsey Coroner's Court in 2003, ruled out that Jeremiah had committed suicide and said he died in a "state of terror".
Such a decision could have prompted further police investigation but a Freedom of Information request by Ms Duggan discovered Coroner Dr William Doleman had told the Met Police there was no need for further fact-finding.
Today they finally heard a new investigation would be launched into how Jeremiah died - quashing the first inquest and ordering a new one.
The decision came after Ms Duggan's tireless one-woman-campaign from her attic in Golders Green.
She has herself pored over the evidence of Jeremiah's death hiring experts to investigate what happened to him.
And finally that evidence was handed over to the High Court for this hearing and considered pertinent by the courts.
Summing up the case, the presiding judge said: "The question we have to answer is if it is in the interests of justice. The court must focus on the possibility that if there's a future inquest the outcome might be different. We are wholly satified that the fresh evidence here could alter the verdict."
The Ham&High has covered the Justice for Jeremiah campaign since its launch.
At court today, Mrs Duggan thanked the paper and said she was overcome with emotion at the verdict.
"When they announced the verdict I felt quite faint actually," she said.
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