Teacher crushed in wheelie bin tried to share taxi

An autopsy revealed Scott Williams died of crush injuries. Photo / Supplied

The New Zealand teacher found crushed last year at a waste transfer station in East Sussex had earlier tried to get his ejected flatmate allowed back into the pub where they were drinking, a British coroner's inquest has been told.

New Zealander Scott Williams, 35, later unsuccessfully tried to share a taxi with two women he met at the Brighton pub, the inquest was told.

Mr Williams apparently ended up crawling into a wheelie bin, and was found dead among rubbish at a waste transfer site, the Press Association in Britain reported.

A former maths teacher at Auckland's Pakuranga College, he was working in London, and travelled to Brighton on July 11 with a flatmate, Robert Pinniger, and planned to stay at Mr Pinniger's mother's house.

The two men went to the Black Lion pub for a night out. Mr Pinniger was asked to leave the pub about 1am but Mr Williams did not leave until the bar closed at 2.30am.

He was later emptied from a rubbish truck which had collected waste from across Brighton about 6.25am, and the results of his post-mortem showed he had died from crush injuries to his chest.

CCTV images of his last known movements showed him walk a female companion to a taxi rank on Brighton seafront in the early hours of July 12. He was never seen alive again.

Mr Pinniger told jurors they drank lager at the Black Lion pub with a number of Sambuca shots, but Mr Williams did not appear particularly intoxicated, he said.

Mr Williams was a keen sportsman and was 190.5cm tall and well-built.

Mr Pinniger said he was eventually asked to leave by door staff after he fell asleep inside the pub. He got a taxi back to his mother's house and he expected Mr Williams to follow later.

Pub doorman Robin Morris said in a statement read at the inquest that he had noticed Mr Williams inside the Black Lion as he was "quite muscular and physically imposing".

But the New Zealander took his time over his drinks and was "not stumbling and falling around".

After he and his colleagues asked Mr Pinniger to leave, Mr Williams tried to persuade him to let him back in, but "he was too sensible to argue with me".

Metro newspaper reported Charlotte Radford told the inquest that she and her sister had met Mr Williams in the pub that night.

"He walked us to the taxi rank and asked to share the taxi with us but we only just had enough to get us home," she added.

At last year's opening of the inquest into his death, toxicology results showed that Mr Williams was almost three times over the British drink-drive limit - with 220mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.

The inquest is continuing.

- NZPA