Mother’s overdose death was third drugs tragedy in toilets

‘She asked me to supply, but I did not inject her’

A jailed drug addict has told an inquest how he “scored” heroin and cocaine in the city centre – which later led to the tragic death of a 33-year-old mother in public toilets.

Carissa Smith asked Alex Bull, 34, to get her the drugs, saying she was having a terrible day and “deserved a treat”.

But almost immediately after injecting herself with the substances in a cubicle in the Canterbury Lane toilets, she collapsed and became lifeless.

An ambulance was called and she was taken to the Kent and Canterbury Hospital but died two hours later, despite the efforts of medics to save her.

The tragedy happened on September 13 last year and the inquest shone a light on the hard drugs problem in Canterbury.

In the same toilets almost a year earlier, Emma Slater was found dead from a heroin overdose and, in 2010, drug user Stefan Pursell also died there.

The inquest heard that, just the day before Carissa’s death, a friend Michelle Pollard, suffered a collapse from a heroin overdose in the city centre and had to be taken away in an ambulance.

Bull, who was a client of the charity Porchlight, was arrested soon after Carissa died after a police investigation but denied actually injecting her.

He was charged with supplying a class A drug, which he admitted, and was jailed last month for 14 months.

Speaking from the dock, Bull told the hearing that Carissa, 33, who lived in Upstreet, had asked him to get the drugs for her and gave him the money.

He said he met a dealer near the Westgate Gardens and “scored” two £10 bags, which they then took into the toilets shortly after midnight to share.

He said: “I brewed it up and she had her own needle and injected herself in the groin. She was sat on the toilet seat but then slumped forward. Her lips were blue and straight away I knew she had overdosed.

“I opened the cubicle door and laid her down on her back. I was panicking and went outside and shouted for someone to call an ambulance.”

A post mortem later revealed Carissa had died from a cocktail of drink

and drugs, including a fatal level of morphine. But her family questioned Bull’s evidence after paramedics said they found a syringe in her sleeve when they removed her clothing while trying to resuscitate her. They queried why the pathologist had only recorded puncture marks in her arms and not her groin. But Bull continued to insist he had not injected her.

Coroner James Dillon heard that Carissa came from a very supportive family and had a 13-year-old daughter. Her father, Desmond Smith, of

Maybrook Lane, Broad Oak, said: “We last saw her on the Tuesday before she died and she was in a good frame of mind and seemed to be getting better.”

Recording her death was drug related, Mr Dillon said: “I can’t answer the family’s lingering doubts about the administering of the drug but on the evidence and balance of probabilities it was consensual.

“She had been engaging with substance abuse services and there is no implication of suicidal intent.”