ABLETT DODGES DRUG QUESTIONS AT WOMAN'S OVERDOSE INQUEST

Former AFL star Gary Ablett was worried about the worsening condition of a
young female companion after she took ecstasy tablets in the hours before
she suffered a drug overdose, he told an inquest yesterday.

He said he kept checking 20-year-old Alisha Horan's condition throughout
the evening of February 16 last year as she appeared to deteriorate under
the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Ms Horan, of Geelong, later collapsed in the hotel room she and Mr Ablett
had been sharing and died from brain damage after being taken to hospital.

Yesterday's evidence shed no further light on Mr Ablett's own alleged
drug-taking that night after his counsel Mr Phil Dunn, QC, repeatedly
objected to any questions which could incriminate his client.

Detective Senior Constable Tom Nairn criticised Mr Ablett, along with
alleged drug dealer Mr Clayton Brown and his girlfriend, for not
co-operating with the inquest.

"The matter would certainly be clearer if the three persons with an
intimate knowledge of Alisha's movements and actions on the night of the
16th of February ... were prepared to detail their knowledge of her drug
taking that night," Constable Nairn told Melbourne Coroners Court.

In his original interview with the police, the former Geelong football
champion refused to say whether he too had taken drugs the night Ms Horan
collapsed.

Coroner Noreen Toohey rejected a request that Mr Ablett be excused from
giving any evidence and ordered him to take the stand, saying he could
raise objections to individual questions.

In a witness statement read to the court, Mr Ablett said Ms Horan was "a
bit out of it" on the night before she collapsed: "She said: 'I'm a bit out
of it. I've taken a couple of green somethings'.

"I don't know exactly what she called them but it may have been green
Mitsubishis. I'm aware that these are ecstasy tablets."

Constable Nairn said Ms Horan had overcome any inhibitions she had about
taking drugs because she was infatuated with Mr Ablett.

The drugs "became available" after Mr Ablett met Mr Brown at the Park Hyatt
Hotel, he said.

As the pair returned to their hotel after visiting various nightspots, Ms
Horan would not, or could not, reply to Mr Ablett when he asked her how she
was.

"I thought she was angry with me about something," he said.

Constable Nairn said traces of heroin found in her body after she died may
have come from pills the pair believed were ecstasy, or it may have been
smoked.

Ms Toohey reserved her findings.