A British man who died in a head-on crash while carrying the body of his dead girlfriend in the back of his vehicle suffered multiple injuries, an inquest has heard.
Caspar Veres, 28, allegedly killed his French partner Delphine Cochet, 41, before he was discovered dead on a motorway in Algeciras, Spain near Gibraltar following a horror collision.
Firefighters had to cut the Leeds University student out of the twisted metal of his vehicle before recovering Ms Cochet's body after he allegedly drove nearly two miles on the wrong side of the road and smashed head-on into a HGV.
A local investigation found she had died of skull fracture inflicted several before the accident, with the smell inside the vehicle reportedly arousing suspicions among police.
An inquest held at County Hall in Maidstone, Kent today heard that Veres had been working as a travelling musician going from country-to-country for several years prior to his death.
His body was repatriated shortly after the incident on September 25, 2020 after a request from his family, said Coroner Sarah Clarke, before being identified by a local funeral directors.
None of Veres' family were present in court, and Ms Clarke said they had "attempted to make contact with the family" but were unable to do so.
The inquest had initially been opened just over a month after the incident, she said, but had faced lengthy delays in getting relevant documents sent over from Spain as they required written consent from the individual's family.
Ms Clark shared that his Spanish death certificate listed his cause of death as 'polytraumatism', a term given to simultaneous impacts to multiple body parts and organs.
As the documents available to her did not give enough information to reach a short-form conclusion, Ms Clarke instead reached a narrative conclusion.
She said: "The most I know is that it was a road traffic collision. So rather than reaching a conclusion of 'accident', I will reach a narrative conclusion.
'"He died as the result of a road traffic accident in Spain on September 25, 2020."
It was earlier reported that Veres was awaiting trial for assaulting two police officers around seven weeks before his death.
Originally from Edgware in north London, he allegedly launched into the physical attack at a Civil Guard station in the fishing village of Barbate near Cadiz on August 6.
