In the early hours of May 26 last year a man was found unconscious next to a running track on the edge of a school field in Canterbury.

A passerby who made the harrowing discovery called 999 at 4.15am and those on the neighbouring London Road Estate woke to a swarm of emergency vehicles outside their homes.

By then the man had been rushed to hospital, where he was placed on a life support machine in intensive care.

The following day, police circulated a public appeal, saying a man in his 40s had suffered a head injury, and three men known to him had been arrested on suspicion of assault.

They added that a disturbance had been reported in the city’s Union Street on the afternoon of May 25 – hours before the injured man had been discovered.

A reporter for KentOnline's sister paper, the Kentish Gazette, visited the residential street off Military Road, where people told how police patrol cars and forensics vans had been stationed in the area for three days.

On June 1, another email was circulated by police. The case had taken a tragic turn. The man had died in hospital on May 29.

On June 3, police cars and vans spent hours at a bungalow in New Dover Road. Police told the Gazette the visit was in connection with the man’s death.

Meanwhile, the three men arrested had been released on bail.

Police declined to release the name of the dead man, hampering the Gazette’s efforts to follow the case through the coroners’ courts.

Reporters kept a watchful eye on inquest listings, looking for a man in his 40s who had died on May 29. But there were no matches.

In July, another man was arrested as part of the police probe, this time a 33-year-old who was also known to the alleged victim.

He too was bailed as investigations continued.

For the next 16 months the Gazette would make many requests for updates from Kent Police.

Each time it was told the same: there is no new information.

That is until November 22 this year, when police revealed that, after extensive inquiries, they had shelved the investigation into the man’s death. The four men arrested had been released without charge on November 1.

They also revealed an inquest into the man’s death had already been held on August 12 – two weeks before police had last told the Gazette there was no update.

'The cause or mechanism relating to that pressure cannot be established at this time.'

Reporters had missed the inquest listing and with it the chance to cover the hearing which examined the circumstances surrounding the man’s death.

Police said the coroner ruled the cause of the man’s head injury was “unexplained”.

But who was he? And what had happened to him in the hours and days before he was found fatally injured in the school field?

A search of the inquest list archive for August 12 threw up no match for a man in his 40s, let alone one who had died on May 29, 2020.

But one name stood out – that of Eduardas Zaicas, a 54-year-old who lost his life at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford on May 28, 2020.

Could the police have given out the wrong information?

The coroner’s report revealed Mr Zaicas had suffered a bleed on the brain, causing a fatal increase in the pressure in his skull and his tragic death.

“The cause or mechanism relating to that pressure cannot be established at this time,” read the report sourced by the Gazette.

Police had released the wrong age of the man at the centre of their investigation, and an incorrect date for his death.

Gazette inquiries established Mr Zaicas had lived in Union Street, the scene of the alleged disturbance in the hours before his death. A reporter visited his flat this week in the hope of speaking to someone who knew him, but it is now empty.

A search on social media would yield one result for Eduardas Zaicas – a Facebook profile containing a photo of a smiling man in the city’s Whitefriars shopping centre.

The Gazette contacted some of his friends, hoping to shed some light on the tragedy and tell the story of a man whose life had been tragically cut short without explanation.

Within hours Simona Zaice responded. The wife of Mr Zaicas’s nephew, she had been the last person to speak to him before his death.

She says Mr Zaicas called her on May 25 to say he had been beaten up at his flat in Union Street.

He had then visited his ex-girlfriend’s house to drop off some belongings before later being found unconscious some 300 metres away.

Simona, who lives in Sweden, tried calling him the following morning but by then he had been rushed to the William Harvey in a critical condition.

“I was trying to call him many times, but he was already in hospital,” said Simona.

“The nurse answered his phone and she told me what condition he was in.”

A video call between doctors and a tearful Simona shows Eduardas on a ventilator in intensive care, his head swollen from his injuries.

Simona travelled to England to see Eduardas, but he tragically died before she arrived.

'She kisses his photo every night before going to bed, even now.'

He was cremated in Kent and his ashes were taken back to Lithuania by Simona and buried in his home city of Siauliai.

She says his death devastated his family and left his mother, Irena, heartbroken.

“She kisses his photo every night before going to bed, even now,” she said.

“He loved his mother very much – she was everything to him.

“He also loved my husband – his nephew – and our children very much.

“For me he was like a brother, we had very strong connection. We miss him a lot.”

Simona says the family had “high hopes for justice” and cannot understand why no one has been held responsible for Eduardas’s death.

Referring to the harrowing video call with William Harvey doctors, she says: “You can see his forehead is all swollen.

“Could it have happened after falling off a bench? Like that?

“Eduardas went to his ex-girlfriend’s house and she saw that he was beaten, and he also told her what had happened in his house. Is it not evidence?”

'No case is ever truly closed and any further evidence which is brought to light in future will be fully and carefully assessed.'

Kent Police says officers analysed a large amount of CCTV showing Mr Zaicas’s movements, studied forensic and medical evidence and spoke to a number of witnesses.

Following a review of information gathered, it was decided to file the case pending further evidence coming to light.

DCI Neil Kimber said: “My team have carried out a full and thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident and, as the coroner concluded at an inquest held on August 12, the cause of a head injury which led to this man’s death remains unexplained.

“I would like to offer my condolences to his family and thank them for their assistance during the investigation.

“No case is ever truly closed and any further evidence which is brought to light in future will be fully and carefully assessed.”

Mr Zaicas had come to the UK in 2017 to start a new life with his girlfriend and her daughter.

He also had a daughter of his own, Kornelija, who is now 29 and lives in Lithuania.

Simona said: “No one can bring him back to us or change what happened, but we really hoped for a different end to the investigation.

“We are not angry, we are sad."