MY NIGHTMARE STORY OF HOW DRUGS KILLED MY BELOVED SON

A Grieving Mom Tells How She Battled To Save 22-year-old Kevin - But How
The Druglords Got Him For Good In The End

On Thusday afternoon Sue Castle buried her 22- year-old son, another victim
of the curse of crack cocaine.

As his coffin was wheeled out of the Benoni Central Methodist Church, his
favourite song, Everybody Hurts by R.E.M., played. His mother wept and
vowed that she would tell her story and that Kevin Castle's death would not
be in vain.

"I want people to know what happened to Kevin. I want parents to realise
that they have to fight this thing.

"Young lives are being ruined, and families torn apart with lies and
deceit, just so that the kids can get their next hit, just so that the
Nigerians can milking us dry for exorbitant amounts of drug money," said
the tired 49-year-old mother.

Her story is a parent's worst nightmare.

She told Metro this week how her son had lost his fight to ditch drugs and
how she had had to pay ransom money to Hillbrow drug dealers to keep him alive.

The end came quickly for Kevin, a fun, intelligent and generous young man,
brought up by a caring single mother in an ordinary suburban home.

He had been home with his mother in Germiston for two months, fresh out of
rehab with dreams of starting a new life.

But a week before he was buried he bought two rocks of crack.

"I figured two little rocks couldn't hurt me. All it took was two little
rocks," Kevin told his mother before he finally went off the rails last
weekend.

Last Thursday night Castle returned home and Kevin was gone. The video
machine was missing. At 9.30pm a Nigerian called her. "They told me that if
I wanted my boy back and alive, I had to pay them R650 and meet them
outside the Sands Hotel in Hillbrow."

She went to the hotel with a friend of her son's. The friend paid the money
to the dealers but Castle waited outside for two hours begging and pleading
with them to release her son.

"When Kevin finally came out, he was pale and high," she said.

By Saturday night, at a family gathering, Kevin seemed happy. But later he
grew quiet and disappeared.

That night she frantically phoned the drug dealers, who said they did not
know where he was. By midnight she made her way back to the Sands Hotel
with Kevin's friend.

The friend begged the Nigerians to take them to Kevin but they said he was
not there.

Castle went home, frantically calling drug dealers, the police, hospitals
and mortuaries.

"I didn't know where he was or who he was with. I wondered if he was cold
and crying somewhere for me," Castle recalled.

On Monday evening she traced Kevin's body to a Johannesburg mortuary. He
had been found in Room 216 of the Sands Hotel with traces of heroin nearby.

But Castle believes her son was killed because of his drug debts. She says
he never used heroin.

"Parents have had to buy back their kids hundreds of times. I have been
buying Kevin back from the Nigerians at R350 a time, three times a week,"
said Castle.

"I think if my son was alive now, he would be speaking out against the drug
syndicates and their abuse of children.

"I think he would wish he could have made the right decisions, because he
would realise that what he has done has hurt our family tremendously.

"If just one other parent and child decide to fight this wretched drug
disease after hearing Kevin's story, then I know he would be satisfied that
his life had been worth something."

How Kevin became an addict

Kevin Castle started doing drugs at 14 when he was introduced to ecstasy
and acid by a high school girlfriend.

By the time he was 15, he was snorting cocaine every day with another
girlfriend.

By the time he was 17 he had been in rehabilitation and had been weaned off
drugs - but he started using cocaine again when he worked as a dance DJ at
a KwaZulu-Natal nightclub.

By the time he was 19, he had fallen in love with a girl whose father would
not allow him to see her.

He became depressed and ultimately turned to crack, a cheaper variety of
cocaine.

By his 21st birthday, he was stealing money, clothing and jewellery to pay
for his crack fix.

A year ago he went back into rehabilitation and was clean until last
Thursday - when he spent R100 on two rocks of crack.

That was the end for Kevin. He was buried this week after dying of a drug
overdose last weekend.

I have 'bought' my sons back from drug dealers 50 times

Ann, a 60-year-old mother, has been to Hillbrow at least 50 times to pay
ransom money to drug dealers holding her two addicted sons.

Ann, who asked that her surname not be used, is well known by the dealers
and drug lords she has encountered while rescuing her two sons aged 22 and
36, both of whom were in rehabilitation with Kevin Castle.

Once she picked up a son clad only in his underwear after he sold his
clothes for drugs - from the streets of Hillbrow at 7am in the middle of
winter.

One son sold his identity book, passport, driver's licence and the mag
wheels off his car to pay for his habit.

"My 22-year-old has been in three rehabilitation centres. He has been out
for two years but is still battling, daily, with his crack addiction. He
does not want to be left alone, at any part of the day, for fear that he
will venture back into Hillbrow," she said.

After being clean for six months, he used crack again three weeks ago.

"But Kevin's death has affected him. He says he is still shocked to have
buried a friend," says Ann.