Dad tells of heartache after daughter’s death from heroin overdose
BORN and raised in the Rhondda, Katrina Williams was a typical girl who loved to make people laugh.
An “intelligent young woman” who was “into mischief ” but who was “always smiling”, Katrina was destined for good things.
But after leaving school at just 16, she fell in with the wrong crowd. She started to use drugs.
Her family say they “didn’t want to believe it”, but tried to help the best they could. The problem was, they couldn’t tell the mum-of-four what to do.
Years later, Katrina decided to get clean. She learnt to cook and was helping out at a local church. She was trying to get her life back on track. But on November 9, 2017, Katrina and her partner Glenn Bradley were found “slumped” on the kitchen floor at their home in Treorchy after dying from a heroin overdose.
Her family say it was one fatal dose. Katrina was just 36 years old. She left behind four children.
But her family don’t want her remembered as an addict. To them, she was simply their happy go-lucky Trina who fell in with the wrong crowd and couldn’t escape her addiction.
Across Wales, heroin deaths are rising. Trina’s life is a harrowing study in how the drug can seize a life, consume it entirely and leave nothing behind.
Sat nestled in Pentre on a sunny autumn day is the home of the Williams family. Dad Steven and his partner Fiona Walker sit on two leather sofas in the living room of the terraced house, sipping cups of tea as their dogs play in the kitchen.
Their friend Emma Williams beside them to offer some comfort.
“She was a perfect child,” Steven said. “She was into mischief and she was a lovable child. She was a good kid.”
“She was always smiling. Every photo you see, she just has this smile on her sits