Missing RAF serviceman Corrie McKeague slept under bin bags on night out, inquest told

An RAF gunner who went missing in 2016 had slept under bin bags on a previous night out, an inquest has heard.

Corrie McKeague, from Dunfermline, Fife, was 23 when he disappeared in the early hours of 24 September 2016 after a night out in Bury St Edmonds.

Suffolk Police believe the airman, who was stationed at RAF Honington, climbed into a bin which was then tipped into a waste lorry.

He used them ‘almost like a blanket’

Mr McKeague’s best friend, Paul Robb, who served with him in the RAF, told an inquest in Ipswich his friend had said he slept under bin bags following a night out in Lichfield, Staffordshire, in 2014.

He said Mr McKeague had been out drinking when they were there on a medic course, adding: “He told me he slept under some bin bags.

“I can’t remember if he described them being full of rubbish, outside a coffee shop or something like that. Round the back where the bin area was.

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“He described using them almost like a blanket to stay warm.”

Downing a bottle of wine in 17 seconds

He said on another night out at Nandos Mr McKeague had “downed a whole bottle of red wine in 17 seconds”, adding: “He had a capability of doing things like that.”

In his witness statement, Mr Robb described how Mr McKeague had climbed up a drainpipe and through a window of the accommodation where he was staying into a room that was not his own before falling asleep there.

He said: “Corrie had always been extreme with his drinking and there were no half measures with Corrie.”

‘A nightmare on the drink’

He described Mr McKeague’s mental state as “up and down”, adding: “He had periods of highs and periods of lows.”

He said Mr McKeague had previously received counselling through a mental health team that assists the RAF and had previously been prescribed antidepressants.

Mr McKeague’s former line manager Sergeant Ross Stevenson described him as a “nightmare on the drink” and said “he liked to be steaming”.

Sgt Stevenson said on a previous occasion he had seen Mr McKeague walking along a road a mile from the airbase around 10am and stopped his vehicle to give him a lift.

“Corrie was walking along the verge of the road and still wearing the clothes from the night before,” Sgt Stevenson said, adding: “Presumably he had been on a night out.”

Ejected from a nightclub

William Hook, the doorman at Flex nightclub who asked Mr McKeague to leave in the early hours of Saturday 24 September said Mr McKeague arrived between 11pm and midnight on the Friday.

He said when he saw Mr McKeague later, around 1am, “he struggled to walk without holding on to anything around him – that was the point I clocked him, I suppose”.

He continued: “I said: ‘I think you’ve had enough mate, shall we go out the front?’.”

The doorman said Mr McKeague co-operated and left the venue in what he described as an “easy ejection”.

The inquest, due to last up to four weeks, continues.

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