A MOTHER has been left devastated after the tragic deaths of her two sons just months apart.

Maureen Tomlinson's son Geoffrey threw himself off Thelwall Viaduct.

Now her youngest boy, David, 33, has died in a fall from his ninth-floor flat after cutting his wrist.

"It is the not knowing why that is the hardest thing," she said.

"There were no notes or goodbyes."

David, who grew up with his two brothers in Thorneyholme Drive, Knutsford, plunged to his death from his flat at Princess Court, Old Trafford. Just four days earlier he had stood at the spot where his elder brother jumped to his death.

At an inquest into David's death last week, coroner John Pollard tried to comfort Mrs Tomlinson, whose husband died of a heart attack 18 years ago.

"I am deeply sorry you had to go through a second inquest for one of your children," he said.

"It is more than anyone should have to do."

At the inquest it emerged that Mrs Tomlinson's surviving son Stephen, 45, of Northfields, Knutsford, had suffered depression after his brothers died and was treated in hospital for 10 weeks.

"You ask why, but these two important people are not there to answer this," he said after the hearing. The coroner had been told that David, a former pupil of Knutsford High, was an informal patient at the Moorside mental health unit at Trafford General Hospital at the time of his death.

He had left the unit without informing staff and walked to the Thelwall Viaduct where his brother died.

He was found by police and taken back to the hospital.

Afterwards he assured doctors and nurses, his mother and brother, that he had just wanted to see where Geoffrey had jumped - and had not intended to jump himself.

But his girlfriend, Julie Stacey, said he had told her that he had gone there to kill himself.

The inquest heard that David was in good health until 2001.

Then - after an argument with his partner at the time - he stabbed himself in the chest and arms and deliberately drove a car into a tree at speed.

He suffered serious leg injuries but made a good recovery. Since then he had suffered from depression.

Mrs Tomlinson, of Brooklands Road, Timperley, described her youngest son as an intelligent, outgoing, sensitive and thoughtful man.

In recording an open verdict, Mr Pollard said the doctors and nurses had not done anything wrong.

"They acted in the best interests of David, to the best of their belief," he said.