A British man died after plunging 10ft into a moat after taking a leak in Paris, an inquest heard.

Simon Bartlett, who worked for a firm of architectural engineers, stopped to urinate during some late-night sight-seeing when he fell to his death.

After finishing dinner with colleagues Mr Bartlett visited Les Invalides, a historic complex of Army museums, in the early hours of June 28 last year.

Detective Constable Christopher Dinenage told the Portsmouth inquest that the 49-year-old father-of-three was found lying face down at the bottom of the dry moat surrounding the building with his trousers undone.




Coroner David Horsley recorded a verdict that Mr Bartlett - who lived in Flemington, New Jersey, USA, but was born in Yeovil, Somerset, and who had studied and lived in Portsmouth, Hampshire, before moving abroad - had died as a result of an accident.


