Riverside bounty proves deadly

A drowned man likely fell into the water while stealing a kayak filled with ‘‘antiques’’, a coroner has ruled.

Early on the morning of January 27, 2015 a walker and rowers reported seeing a body in the Whanganui River, near the city.

It was retrieved by police and identified as Whanganui man Jayden Robert Tilby, 24.

His brother and friends told police he was excited about finding an ‘‘old abandoned’’ shed by the river, full of ‘‘heaps of old stuff like antiques and a kayak’’.

His plan was to get a truck to cart the items away, which would be ‘‘a mean earn’’. But he would try rowing them across the river if he could not do so.

About 11am on January 24, 2015, that morning, a rower saw a six-seater kayak floating down the river with no-one aboard, and tied the boat to the river bank.

Tilby’s mother grew worried the next morning, because it was unusual for him to not come home, and she began searching for him with his friends.

Meanwhile, the boatshed’s owner found it had been burgled and reported it to police. After Tilby’s body was recovered on the 27th, his bike was found near the shed.

There was a footprint matching his boots in the shed. His body was wearing the heavy work boots and his mother told police he was not a strong swimmer.

An autopsy found he died by drowning. His blood-alcohol level was higher than the drink drive limit for those over 20 years, but could have been altered by decomposition.

Coroner Carla na Nagara said although it was unclear if Tilby had fallen out of the kayak, or had been unable to get in when launching it, he was unable to save himself once in the water.

‘‘I am satisfied Jayden drowned in the course of his attempt to use a large kayak to steal goods from the property on the banks of the Whanganui River,’’ she said in a report released yesterday.