Thanksgiving service held for Chief Constable Michael Todd today
Manchester will come to a virtual standstill this morning (Friday) as Britains most senior policemen pay tribute to Chief Constable Michael Todd.
Manchester will come to a virtual standstill this morning (Friday) as Britains most senior policemen pay tribute to Chief Constable Michael Todd.
The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is expected, to the thanksgiving service at 11am the scale of which is normally reserved for departing football legends.
Senior officers, along with 1,000 officers from the rank and file, will form a guard of honour outside Manchester Cathedral.
Mr Todd will be honoured exactly one month to the day that he was found dead on a north Wales mountain on March 11.
It has also emerged that the final hours of Mr Todd, 50, are to be reconstructed as part of an inquiry into his death.
North Wales coroner Dewi Pritchard-Jones has appointed a police inspector with specialist knowledge in mountaineering to draw up a timetable of Mr Todd`s last actions.
The coroner will be trying to establish whether more could have been done to save Mr Todd, who was found dead on the lower slopes of Mount Snowdon.
Det Insp Gerwyn Lloyd, a member of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Team, will be asked to work out when Mr Todd parked his Range Rover in the town of Llanberis, which route he took to get to the mountainside, when he arrived there and when he sent text messages to two women, which prompted the search for him.
Mr Pritchard-Jones said: I am looking at what he did in the three to four days before he died. I will examine the text messages to see if they reveal any suicidal intentions or not.
I have met with a team with specialist knowledge in mountaineering, including Inspector Lloyd, and members of the Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team. They are putting together the chief constable`s last movements.
I have asked them to put together a timetable of where he was at certain times and where he was going and what he was doing, to try and find out why he died.
As well as the reconstruction, North Wales Police, whose Chief Supt Christopher Corcoran is leading the inquiry, will scrutinise the communications between Greater Manchester Police and Welsh police and mountain rescue services.
The coroner has now obtained medical reports and established a cause of death. It is likely that a full inquest will be held in June.
Mr Todd, married with three teenage children, was said to have been distressed about personal issues.