HEROIN USE IS likely to have played a role in the death of Peaches Geldof, an inquest in Britain heard on Thursday.

The 25-year-old model and journalist, who had two young children, was found dead at her home on April 7.

Her mother, TV presenter Paula Yates, died of a heroin overdose in 2000.

“Recent use of heroin and the levels identified were likely to have played a role in her death,” police detective Paul Fotheringham told the opening of the inquest in Gravesend, southern England.

Peaches had been looking after her 11-month-old son Phaedra at her home in Wrotham, Kent.

Her husband had spent the previous night apart from his wife and was looking after their eldest son, 23-month-old Astala.

He raised the alarm when he could not contact her by phone.

In 2000 Geldof’s mother Yates accidentally overdosed on heroin while looking after her four-year-old daughter with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence at their London home.

Hutchence was found dead in a Sydney hotel room in 1997 in what a coroner ruled was suicide.

Peaches posted online an old photograph of her with her mother the night before her death.

Reports in the Times of London had suggested last night that a heroin overdose was the cause of her death.

A full inquest into her death is due to take place in July.

- © AFP, 2014

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