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Friday, 5 October 2007

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Pete Doherty to be questioned again over party death

Case reopened as suicide ruling is deemed inaccurate

The death of a partygoer at a party attended by Pete Doherty is to be reopened by the police.

Mark Blanco, 30, fell from a fourth story balcony last December at a flat in Whitechapel, East London.

It was first presumed that Mark had committed suicide, but new evidence has been brought to the inquest leading to the coroner Dr Andrew Reid rejecting the notion.

The inquest was told that Jonny Jeannevol, a close friend of Pete, told police shortly after the incident that he pushed Mark to his death.

He later withdrew his confession and the case was closed, but the inquest ruled this matter should be looked into further.

'I got so low, it got to the point where people were doing my head in, so I said I did it,' Jonny told the court. 'It was only after I was arrested and was in the cell that it dawned on me I had been an idiot.'

The inquest also called for Pete, who has just finished a stint in rehab, to be questioned again, after claims that he fled the party before the police and an ambulance arrived.

'Peter wholeheartedly aided police with their inquiries at the time of this tragic event,' Murray Chalmers, from Pete's label Parlophone, says. 'He was completely exonerated following his cooperation with the investigation last year.

'His feelings for the family of Mark remain as sympathetic for their loss now as they were at the time.'

Holly Arnold