Death of Corrie McKeague

Corrie McKeague, a Royal Air Force Regiment gunner born in Perth, Scotland in September 1993, disappeared in the early hours of 24 September 2016 in the Bury St Edmunds area of Suffolk, England. He served as a Senior Aircraftman gunner and medic with No. II Squadron Royal Air Force Regiment at RAF Honington. No remains were ever found, but a 2022 inquest concluded that McKeague died after climbing into a commercial waste bin that was emptied into a bin lorry, and he was legally declared dead.

On the night of 23 September 2016, McKeague drove to Bury St Edmunds and drank with friends, intending to leave his car overnight. After leaving the Flex nightclub, where a doorman recalled him as 'no trouble,' he ate at Mama Mia's takeaway between about 1:15 am and 1:30 am. Town-centre CCTV recorded his last confirmed sighting at 3:25 am on Brentgovel Street, walking into a cul-de-sac known as the 'Horseshoe area,' where a number of wheelie bins were kept; footage suggested he slept briefly in a doorway, but no camera recorded him leaving. Because he had the weekend off, McKeague was not reported missing until 26 September, when he failed to report for duty.

Mobile-phone mast data showed McKeague's phone travelling from Bury St Edmunds toward a landfill near Barton Mills in 28 minutes, too quick to have been carried on foot. Suffolk Constabulary initially gave the landfill low search priority after estimating that a bin lorry on that route was carrying only 15 kilograms — far lighter than McKeague's own body weight of about 90 kilograms — but in March 2017 acknowledged the load had actually been more than 100 kilograms. Investigators also examined whether someone had given McKeague a lift, and Superintendent Katie Elliott said third-party involvement had not been ruled out. Searches covered local industrial estates, railway lines, a closed stretch of the A14, and King's Forest woodland; by December 2016 a CCTV 'pod' in the town had helped identify 13 of 23 people previously unidentified on footage from the two hours around his disappearance.

From February 2017, Suffolk Police searched the Barton Mills landfill for several months, sifting thousands of tonnes of waste; the search ended in July 2017 without finding McKeague's remains, and a second search began at a landfill in Milton, Cambridgeshire, in October 2017. The operation, known as Operation Phonetic, was stood down in March 2018 after police said there were 'no realistic lines of inquiry left,' having cost more than £2.1 million, part of it later reimbursed by an £800,000 government payment. McKeague's mother, Nicola Urquhart, publicly disputed the police's account, arguing a third party was more likely involved and disputing the force's bin-lorry weight data. His father, Martin, said in April 2018 that he believed his son was dead and speculated he might have taken his own life; the rest of the family rejected this, noting the text informing McKeague of his girlfriend's pregnancy was not sent until after he disappeared.

In November 2020, following a request from McKeague's family, a full inquest was announced. It opened on 7 March 2022 at Suffolk Coroner's Court in Ipswich and concluded on 22 March 2022 with a narrative conclusion that McKeague died at about 4:20 am in Bury St Edmunds after climbing into a waste bin tipped into a bin lorry, recording the cause of death as compression asphyxia in association with multiple injuries, contributed to by impaired judgement due to alcohol consumption.