DRUGS KILLED 20 OF MY FRIENDS

A MOTHER accused of manslaughter after her teenage daughter died from
a heroin overdose admitted yesterday that 20 of her own friends had
died in the same way.

Andrea Townsend, 46, whose 16-year-old daughter Carly died at her home
last May, said the girl's father - her late husband Stephen Townsend -
had died after overdosing on the heroin substitute Palfium.

She also revealed that Carly had been hospitalised twice for heroin
overdoses before she died and that on one occasion she discharged her
daughter from hospital without telling doctors.

At Swansea Crown Court, Townsend and Carly's sister Gemma Evans, 25,
both of Pwll, Llanelli, deny Carly's manslaughter through gross negligence.

Paul Thomas, prosecuting, says instead of calling an ambulance for
Carly, the pair watched TV soaps including Emmerdale.

Giving evidence from the witness box yesterday, mother-of-four
Townsend was asked by Mr Thomas if she had any friends who had died
from heroin overdoses.

She replied: "About 20".

The prosecutor said: "We can take it from that then that you know that
heroin can kill people?"

She answered: "Yes."

Townsend also accepted that her daughter and Carly's sister, her
co-defendant Gemma Evans, had once "been brought back from the dead"
after suffering a heroin overdose.

Mr Thomas said of the night Carly died: "You lost your husband, nearly
your daughter and 20 friends to heroin.

"In those circumstances, why did you take any chances at all when you
saw Carly had been affected by heroin?"

She said: "I'd seen her worse."

The jury had heard that at the beginning of 2007, Carly, who had been
taking heroin for around two years, spent three months in the Hillside
Secure Unit for Young Offenders in Neath for drug-related offences.

She was released three months later into the care of her mother,
wearing an electronic tag, which did not allow her out of her mother's
Llanelli home after 9.30pm.

She had not taken any drugs during the three months and vowed to give
them up. The period of abstinence meant she had lost her tolerance to
heroin.

However, Townsend said yesterday that the day after her release in
April last year Carly "went out" and arrived home nine minutes after
her curfew.

Townsend said: "I knew that she'd taken heroin and myself and Carly
went to see her drugs worker to tell her Carly was using.

"We were hoping it was just a blip."

Townsend said before Carly had gone into the Hillside unit, her
daughter had been using between four and five UKP10 bags of heroin a
day.

On May 2 last year, Townsend said she was mowing the lawn when Carly
came out. She said: "Carly was pleased that she'd bought three UKP10
bags for UKP20."

Mr Thomas asked: "What did you tell her about it, if
anything?"

She said: "Just 'be careful'."

Mr Thomas asked her: "Don't you think you could have stopped her by
destroying the drugs... something like that?"

She replied: "No, she would just have run out of the
house."

Townsend said later in the day it became obvious to her Carly had
taken heroin, and later she believed her daughter had taken a second
dose by injection, finding drugs paraphernalia on her bed.

She said she was frightened after Carly's lips turned blue but this
only lasted for seconds so she and Evans placed Carly on a bed and she
"listened to her snoring" from downstairs where she watched television.

She said repeatedly she thought her daughter would "sleep it
off".

Mr Thomas asked Townsend: "Are you a big fan of Emmerdale?" She replied "No."

He asked her if her 20 friends who had died from heroin overdoses came
into her mind when her daughter was upstairs.

She replied: "No."

Townsend insisted yesterday she would have called an ambulance for her
daughter if she had thought she had been in danger.

But she told the jury she had seen Carly "10 times worse" after taking
drugs on previous occasions.

Ian Murphy QC, defending, asked her: "It's been suggested you've been
grossly negligent in failing to call an ambulance... did you have
anything to fear from calling an ambulance that night?"

She answered, "No."

Mr Murphy said: "What was the worst thing that would have happened to
Carly if you had called the emergency services?"

Townsend said: "She'd have gone back in [to Hillside] if her life was
in danger. I would rather have seen her in there."

Mr Murphy went on: "Was it the situation that you didn't care whether
she lived or died?"

She said: "No."

Cross-examining Townsend, Mr Thomas said: "Carly was going in and out
of consciousness, you had to physically lift her onto her bed and she
complained of a hot head, the same symptom Gemma complained of when
she nearly died of an overdose.

"In those circumstances, why not call an ambulance?"

Townsend said: "I thought she'd have slept it off in a couple of
hours."

After further questioning, Townsend admitted Carly had wanted to go
back into the Hillside Secure Unit in the days before she died.

But she rejected a suggestion from Mr Thomas that it was because she
was not getting enough family support in giving up drugs. She said:
"They were putting too much on her. They wanted her to go into the
social services offices sometimes twice a day and she didn't want to
do it."

Later yesterday, Gemma Evans declined to give evidence from the
witness box.

Final speeches in the case are expected to be delivered today.