PARAMEDICS found a young woman in Hallowe’en devil horns and red body paint after she hanged herself from an iron fire escape.

Harriet Penelope Henry, 28, took her own life after winning a fancy dress contest at a Hallowe’en party in Chichester last year.

Her inquest heard the part time model stormed out on her boyfriend Josh Mercier on October 29. She had a history of self harming and previous suicide attempts.

In a statement read at the inquest Josh Mercier said Penny had sent him text messages after leaving his flat in Chichester telling him she was leaving him.

He said: “I’ve been told things like this by her in the past and it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. At 6.22am , she said goodbye.

I tried to call her. “I thought she’d get back in touch once she’d calmed down.”

Psychiatrist Dr Jean Sherrington told the inquest Harriet, known to her friends as Penny, had been treated for an emotionally unstable personality disorder as a result of sexual abuse as a child.

“She would have had distressingly intense feelings which they find difficult to manage.

“Self harming was a way of dealing with those intense feelings,” the doctor said.

Mum Barbara Stewart-Newell described her daughter as an emotional person who understood and empathised with everyone.

“She seemed to be drawn to troubled characters who she tried to save,” Mrs Stewart-Newell said. Miss Henry had worked as a model and in bars and coffee shops in Chichester.

Mental health professionals who had assessed her before her death did not believe she was a suicide risk.

Coroner Elisabeth Bussey-Jones said: “She was clearly a very beautiful lady who touched the lives of many. “She was clearly in a very low and distressed place at the time she did this.”

Her body was found hanging by a scarf at Baffins Court in Chichester.