RIDDLE AS GIRL,18 DIES OF HEROIN IN HOME OF MAN, 51
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A TEENAGE girl died of a heroin overdose after going home from a night out with a man almost three times her age.
Pretty Charlotte Wade, 18, was found dead at the home of 51-year-old Stephen McDonald 12 hours after losing touch with a pal.
An inquest heard as well as heroin, tests found traces of both cocaine and morphine in her blood that would have both been fatal taken on their own.
Charlotte had also been drinking heavily in Preston, Lancs, when she went with McDonald.
She knocked on an ex-boyfriend’s door before ending up at McDonald’s home.
The hairdressing student later made a call to a friend from his phone but told the pal not to tell anyone where she was.
Cocktail
The following afternoon McDonald called an ambulance to say he had found Charlotte unresponsive at his flat.
It is not believed she had a history of drug issues and it remains a mystery how she ended up at his home.
McDonald was later jailed for four years for two charges of supplying Class A drugs and failing to surrender to bail.
He had gone on the run but was tracked down after Charlotte’s family made a social media appeal for his whereabouts.
Describing the cocktail of drugs in Charlotte’s system, pathologist Dr Alison Armor said: “In her blood was morphine, heroin and its metabolites, cocaine and its metabolites and gabapentin.
“There was an amount of morphine found in her blood which was fatal on its own.”
The coroner gave the cause of death as drug-related.