by Emma Grove

An inquest into the death of a prominent Islander has found that he took his own life.
The body of Eastchurch parish councillor Captain John Carter was discovered in the grounds of his home on December 9 last year, with a shotgun wound to his head.
Capt Carter, who was the driving force behind this coming July’s Sky Sheppey events, had been suffering with stress and flashbacks from a shipping accident he was involved in during the 1980s.
His body was found by his wife Kathleen in the garden of their Warden Point home.
The inquest, which was held at the Corn Exchange in Rochester last Thursday, heard that Capt Carter took early retirement from a shipping company 20 years ago because of stress related to the accident.
A statement given to police by Mrs Carter on the day he was found was read at the inquest.
It said the 69-year-old had been very down, stressed and frightened for two or three months before he died.
She said how he would often grab hold of her and hold her for reassurance.
According to his wife, Capt Carter had also been very stressed with the organising of the Sky Sheppey event.
He then started to have flashbacks of the shipping accident, and he said he felt he had let people down.
In her statement Mrs Carter said: “There had been deaths and I feel he never got over it.”

The statement also described how her husband had been very down at the weekend but had gone to church as normal.
On Monday, December 8, a friend visited the house in the morning and Capt Carter then took him home before visiting a lady to carry out some work for her.
In the afternoon Mrs Carter and her husband returned to their house where they made lunch and read the paper.
Mrs Carter then went to visit her sister, where she had a cup of tea and fed some of the animals on her farm.
At about 5.45pm, she went back to the house, where she noticed her husband hadn’t put the outside light on.
She saw his glasses and a cup of tea on a table indoors but couldn’t find her husband and began searching.
She drove to Eastchurch, Warden Bay and Shellness to look for him, and phoned their son Robin to tell him.
Robin came to the house to help with the search.
Her statement said: “I felt something was wrong, I kept calling him, and I began
to panic. “I remember being terrified, I was very scared and worried.”
Mrs Carter then phoned the police, who conducted a full search including dogs, a rescue helicopter, the Sheerness lifeboat and Sheppey Coastguard.
The search was called off and Mrs Carter said she didn’t get to bed until about 4am, but couldn’t sleep and felt she needed to continue looking for him.
Just after 6am, she opened the curtains and saw her husband lying on his side.
She called for Robin, who told her to phone an ambulance.
He ran out to his father, where he found blood covering his head and the gun beneath him.
An ambulance crew arrived and he was pronounced dead.
Coroner Roger Sykes recorded a verdict of suicide and passed his condolences on to the family.