DANNY Reinthal intentionally took an overdose of his prescription drugs but might not have meant to kill himself.

The 31-year-old, from Walcot, a chronic paranoid schizophrenic, called emergency services 10 minutes after swallowing the tablets.

At an inquest in Swindon coroner Nigel Brookes said: "He phoned after 10 minutes. Perhaps he thought something could be done to prevent their effect."

But Dr Darko Lazic, a consultant pathologist at Great Western Hospital, said it was too late to save the former soldier who served with the Royal Green Jackets.

He said: "No one can survive this amount of the drug in their blood."

The coroner, who gave a narrative verdict to explain what happened on February 23 last year, said he had concerns about procedures used by mental health services in Swindon and also the ambulance service.

When Mr Reinthal rang emergency services his case was given a serious' categorisation but when an ambulance technician arrived at his home it was clear that he was immediately life threatening', which is higher priority.

The inquest heard that the categorisation could not be amended in the light of new information.

Mr Brookes said: "I'm concerned about the apparent inability to change the categories but this is national policy.

"At most the delay was half an hour and Dr Lazic said death was inevitable.

"Perhaps a medical opinion ought to have been sought when Danny expressed the view that there was a 50-50 chance that he could take his own life. I ask the appropriate teams to go away and consider."

Danny had made the comments to a support worker the day before his overdose.

The coroner said that Danny's mother, Sally Rawlings, had been entitled to a response when she contacted mental health services to warn them of her son's mental state.

Peter Wilson, acting director of mental health services for Swindon and Wiltshire, Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, said: "We would like to express our condolences to his family and friends.

"Danny's death caused much sadness among our teams in Swindon who worked hard to treat and care for him. We acknowledge that the coroner was not critical of the care and treatment that Danny received from us, however we will be carefully considering his suggestions to see if there are any improvements we can make."

Paul Gates, director of operations at Wiltshire Ambulance Service, said: "Unfortunately a delay occurred because of the demands placed on the ambulance service.

"As soon as a vehicle became available to transport the patient to hospital it was allocated to that job.

"A change of code would not have altered the response time as we did not have a vehicle available."

Following the inquest Mrs Rawlings said: "I accept the coroner's decision and agree with his comments.

"I sincerely hope the relevant authorities will act upon the suggestions made by the coroner and the concerns raised by the family to prevent such a tragedy happening again."