Florida authorities are probing just how a 32-year-old man trying to get back into his girlfriend's house via the catflap came to kill himself in the process.

Charles Tucker Jr had earlier been ejected from the premises, in St Augustine, by his other half. Several hours later on Saturday morning she found him dead, firmly wedged in the feline portal. His friend Will Elliot, who lives down the street, recounted: "Maybe at 3am, my older brother called me and told me - he was crying - that she [the girlfriend] had called him and she found him dead in the door."

Elliot continued: "He's a big guy. I don't even know how he could fit through there. Probably to get in and unlock the door. They said he had one arm through there and his head was caught in there like he was to reach up and unlock the door because there's no way he could fit through there.

"Maybe he just passed out because there was no sign of struggle or anything. She would have heard him. She was in the house."

Police had already had a run-in with Tucker the day before the tragedy, when they found him "slumped over the wheel of his car", as local6.com puts it. He was taken to hospital, and later released.

Officers are remaining tight-lipped about the possible cause of Tucker's demise, pending results of an autopsy. The offending door, meanwhile, had by Monday been removed and "put out with the trash", as you can see in local6.com's snap. ®

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