COLLEAGUES of an Audi apprentice mechanic who hanged himself had locked him in a cage and set fire to his clothes, beaten him and scratched him in a number of malicious attacks in the months leading up to his death, an inquest heard yesterday.

The parents of the 18-year-old said he had come home covered in bruises with holes burned into his clothes.

A coroner heard their son said his colleagues had locked him in a cage at the garage, doused him in a flammable liquid and set fire to his clothes.

On April 9 2015, when George Cheese had worked for Audi for more than six months he was seen leaving the family home.

Keith Cheese told the inquest he and his wife Purdy heard ambulance sirens in front of their home shortly after.

They rushed outside to find their son had hanged himself from a tree, close to a public footpath.

Keith told the coroner that he would never forgive himself for missing the warning signs leading to his son’s death.

The evening before his death, George had been pacing around the house, saying “I have to quit, I can’t go back there” over and over again.

Having told his son not to resign from his job and that things would get better, the father said he now realised how “ridiculous” this response was.

George’s mother said she had been aware of the decline in her son’s mental health for several months and she had been able to ensure he took his medication until the final few days of his life, when she had fallen ill.

George’s mother Purdy told the inquest in Reading Town Hall the verbal abuse from his colleagues had cut much deeper than his physical injuries in the final weeks of his life.

As his mental illness became known around his workplace, his mother said comments such as “take your happy pills George, you’re going to need them” became a regular occurrence.

Coroner Peter Bedford was told no action was taken after George reported the problem and he had later told his mother his boss had seen him the day he got locked in the cage and had laughed and walked away.

George’s father told the inquest that in hindsight he realised he had dismissed George when he said he suffered from depression.

“I would offer comments like ‘you don’t want to leave the job before you have found another one’,” he told the inquest but acknowledged George’s problems were more serious than he first believed them to be.

“Still, he joined a martial arts group and said it was because he was the smallest at work and needed to be able to defend himself.”

George had also enlisted to become an Army mechanic in February 2014 but had to quit when he suffered stress fractures to both legs and applied for the job at the Audi dealership in the hope that he could still follow his dream.

In a statement read by coroner Mr Bedford, service manager Julie Adams of the Reading mental health team said George had told her about his abusive colleagues, saying “they have set people on fire before.” However, he did not tell her about his personal experience.

During a crisis call from the mental health department following his first overdose, George had told her his employers “could really take it too far sometimes”, to the point when it “actually got a bit dangerous.”

Michelle Mbayiwa conducted a review into the mental health trust’s conduct. She said the 18-year-old was still waiting for an appointment with a counsellor when he died.

She said that four to six weeks waiting time was normal for a patient deemed as at “moderate risk”, but believed this assessment should have been upgraded when George told of his previous suicide attempts.

The coroner heard one of George's bosses at Audi Reading had previously told him to "hurry up and kill himself" and described him as "useless", according to notes found on his iPad after his death.

When confronted about this by Thames Valley Police, the dealership's manager, Terry Kindeleit, said it might have been one of his superiors who had "gone berserk" after George refused to clean the floor in the garage but would not reveal his full name, according to a transcript presented at the inquest.

He told the coroner George's parents had approached him to talk about the abuse. George had been sitting in a corner of the room with his head down and later said he did not wish to make a formal complaint.

Based on this, Mr Kindeleit said he had concluded George was making it up and said he would not have been surprised if the story was completely fabricated by the "troubled individual."

However, Mr Kindeleit did not deny he had witnessed George being locked in a cage and set on fire and had reacted by laughing and walking away, but he could not recall telling George's parents about this at the meeting

Referring to the months of alleged abuse, George's line manager, Simon Wright, had said his actions - which included setting fire to his trousers, giving him the "dead leg" and taking him for a test drive to force him to walk back - said it had all been "horseplay" and "banter".

Mr Wright had admitted setting fire to George's trousers but said their work uniforms were made of non-flammable material, which was why he needed to douse them in flammable liquid.

He said that on a separate occasion, he had seen George do the same thing himself and claimed he had not been harmed in either of the circumstances.

Another colleague at the Audi dealership, Poppy Cleall, said being driven around in the boot of a car was something that happened to all the apprentices including herself and said she had climbed into the back of a car willingly when it was her turn.

She described George tended to take the pranks seriously but she did not know him well.

The inquest continues.