Driver died after being drugged in Algerian bar
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• A truck driver found dead in a French canal had taken a combination of sleeping tablets and beer, a Bradford inquest heard last week. But it is thought that 44-year-old James Tolley had been given the lethal mixture by a woman he had met earlier inside an Algerian bar in Roubaix.
A verdict of unlawful killing was recorded on Tolley, of Kingfisher Grove, Lower Grange, Bradford, who died in September 1992.
A friend told how Tolley collapsed unconscious inside a car while they were being driven back to their vehicles by a man and the woman. "I pulled Jimmy out of the car and as I did so I felt my wallet being removed by a man outside," said Harold Sutcliffe.
Sutcliffe hit the man, who escaped after a chase, and when he returned to the car Tolley had gone. The next day Tolley was found in the canal. The inquest heard the two men had got in the car with the woman because she said she could find them some more beer.
Consultant pathologist Dr Jan Lowe said it was highly likely that the sleeping tablet Rohypnol was in the beer.
Coroner James Turnbull said criminal proceedings had been started against a man and a woman arrested in connection with the death, but they were at an early stage. "I am satisfied that the drug was administered to Mr Tolley, which he wasn't aware of, and that it was in the pursuance of a criminal activity," he said.