A man serving life in prison for murdering the son of a footballer has died behind bars. Simon Fell was jailed in March 1996 for killing Grant Noble, son of Manchester United title winner Bobby Noble.

Grant, a 26-year-old dad-of-two, was murdered by Fell outside The Station pub in Sale, Trafford, in 1994. He was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 15 years but remained in prison after this expired, Manchester Evening News reports.

In April 2019, he was moved to HMP Wymott in Lancashire. He had several health issues, including high blood pressure, and believed that he would be left blind if he did not wear a cap and sunglasses. There was no medical evidence to support this belief, which medical staff treated as a mental health issue.

On January 29 this year, prison warders were unlocking cells when they spotted Fell, wedged between his bed and a bedside table. Paramedics were called but the 60-year-old con was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Prisons & Probation Ombudsman carries out investigations into all deaths in custody in order to ascertain if the individual received care equivalent to that they would have been given in the community.

A report published last week revealed that the cause of death was a cardiac incident due to atheromatous coronary vascular disease (thickening or hardening of the arteries) and left ventricular hypertrophy (thickening of the wall of the heart’s main pumping chamber), which was caused by hypertension (high blood pressure).

The ombudsman did not find any clinical issues around Fell’s care at Wymott. He was frequently seen by healthcare staff to manage his blood pressure and asthma issues, and they created appropriate care plans and made appropriate hospital referrals.

Fell was the 20th death from natural causes since January 2020, with one further self-inflicted death and one that was drug-related. Since Fell’s passing, there have been five further deaths from natural causes.