PRIVATE Jake Kovco would not have killed himself as he considered suicide a “coward’s way out”, his friend Corporal Stephen Volkofsky told an inquest into his death yesterday.

Corporal Volkofsky, who spent the entire day in the witness box at Glebe Coroners Court, was in the room next toKovco’s when theprivate was killed by a gunshot wound to the head.

In the minutes before the shooting, Corporal Volkofsky, who had just come off duty, repeatedly told the boisterous group singing along to a pop song in the room next door, including Private Kovco, to “shut the f..k up”. Each time he asked them to tone the noise down, the music and their singing got louder.

“I asked them to be quiet, in much more blunt terms, then I heard a gunshot,” Corporal Volkofsky said.

He told the court that he smelt cordite almost at the same time as hearing the gun go off and had immediately run to Kovco’s room, where he saw him slumped on the ground. Corporal Volkofsky then ran for help.

He said he found suggestions that Kovco had killed himself to be offensive and confirmed his views in previous written statements that he could not have committed suicide. “We both believed suicide was a coward’s way out,” he said. “We shared the same views. It was not in his nature.”

They had discussed the issue in the context of the circumstances they had to deal with in Iraq. “Self-harm was the coward’s way out,” Corporal Volkofsky said. “I said I could deal with most things except a suicide because I don’t understand it, and he agreed with me.”

The inquest continues today.