A PENSIONER died shortly after drinking detergent which he thought was a cola drink.

Jack 'John' Cowhen, 66, screamed to his wife he had been poisoned after taking a drink from the bottle last November, an inquest was told. Moments later the pensioner, of Sterndale Bennett Road, Ringland, Newport, vomited, collapsed and died.

Yesterday, an inquest into his death found although a cola-coloured detergent was in the bottle it was not poisonous and did not kill him. A post mortem examination revealed the OAP had undetected severe heart disease and was a "ticking timebomb" waiting to go off.

Gwent coroner David Bowen found Mr Cowhen died from natural causes. He said: "He could've died at anytime."

He said it could have been "triggered" by anxiety or fear Mr Cowhen felt, believing he had been poisoned.

Diabetic Mr Cowhen was watching television at home on November 2 last year when he went into the kitchen to get the bottle of cola from the fridge. Wife Pat Cowhen told the inquest: "I walked in and he said to me, 'Quickly, I've been poisoned, get me a glass of water and phone an ambulance. My throat is on fire and the pit of my stomach is on fire'."

By the time Mrs Cowhen did all this her husband was dead. She called the ambulance control room back and they told her how to give mouth-to-mouth.

But when emergency crews arrived 25 minutes later he was pronounced dead.

Mrs Cowhen smelt the contents of the bottle. "It smelt like bleach," she said.

The drink was sent off for "exhaustive" forensic examination, and tests for cyanide and other drugs came back negative.

Gwent coroner David Bowen said: "Analysis revealed although it contained nothing like Vanilla Coke it did not contain a toxic substance either, but a detergent coloured to give the appearance of it."

Pathologist Rick James, who carried out Mr Cowhen's post mortem, said: "He could've died of his heart disease at anytime. He died of it at a time he drank something he was not expecting to drink."

The coroner recorded a verdict of natural causes probably triggered by ingestion of non-toxic foreign substance.