TRAGIC STORY OF A BOY WHO GREW UP TO BE AN ADDICT

WHEN Mary Turner was reunited with her son Michael for the first time
in four years she thought that he had finally turned his life around.

Michael had just been released from prison. He had met a new partner
and was winning his long running battle with heroin.

He was, she says, full of hope and talking about the future.

Seeing him looking fit and healthy she dared to believe that she had
her old son back - the one she knew before his drug addiction took
hold and led him to a life of crime.

But yesterday Mary had to face every parent's worst nightmare and
identify the body of her dead son.

Michael was 31 years old and, after spending most of his adult life
in and out of prison, he died in the toilets of Swindon train station
from a heroin overdose.

Mary says the family will never know why he took the lethal injection
of drugs.

"Before I saw him I was holding on to the thought that it might not
have been him," she said.

"I was hoping the police had got it wrong. They hadn't got it wrong
and it was Michael."

Mary had last seen Michael, of Liden, three weeks ago when he and his
girlfriend Gemma Newell visited her in Essex.

"Michael has got a long history of being in prison and taking drugs
and I'd moved away and hadn't seen him for four years," she said.

"But three weeks ago he came up with his girlfriend. She was lovely.
He was clean - he had kicked it on his own and was trying so hard.

"He was struggling and in pain but he didn't take anything. I know he
was trying.

"They spent time with me and they went into town and were playing in
the sea. He was happy.

"I felt I had got him back and now this."

Mary says the whole family, including his brother Gary, of Park
South, and sister Christine, of Penhill, are in shock following
Michael's death.

"He had only been out of prison a short while and maybe the drugs
were a shock to his system.

"Why he took it we will never know but I do know he was trying."

Mary said her son's death should be a warning to others who take drugs.

"You don't expect your children to die before you do," she said.

"I thought I had got him back. He was getting somewhere, but he had
struggled for years.

"He hadn't been a good boy. He had been in trouble and been in prison
but this time he came out and was trying.

"But once you start taking this stuff it's so hard to stop.

"Michael had to do horrible things to get money.

"He thought he had turned the corner and we thought so too."

Police act on your tip-offs LAST month the Adver-backed Swindon Drugs
Hotline was launched in an effort to free our town of the misery
caused by the drug trade.

The phone line allows people who are concerned about drug dealing in
their area to phone and leave information anonymously.

The tip-off system is already paying dividends with police revealing
in last week's Adver that they are following up a number of leads in
east Swindon.

PC Mark Smith said: "The more information we get the better.

"We can't do anything unless we know it's happening and we need
people to tell us where there is a problem."

And police revealed on Thursday that they had charged a suspected
heroin dealer thanks to information from residents living in the
Broad Green area of town - proving that officers are acting on what
they are told by the public.