I forgive addict who gave daughter lethal overdose, says father
tHE father of a drug addict PhD student says he has forgiven the homeless junkie who injected her with a fatal cocktail of crack cocaine and heroin.
Claire Drury, 32, died shortly after Stephen Perrett gave her the mixture known as a ‘snowball’.
Homeless Perrett, nicknamed ‘the Doctor’ by drug users because of his reputation jailed for six for years injecting after others, admitting was manslaughter.
Last night Miss Drury’s 64-year-old father Stephen said she had made her own choices in life and he saw Perrett as just another victim of the drug culture which killed her. ‘i felt sorry for Perrett in court,’ he said. ‘ He looked like such a lone figure. there was no- one there to support him.
‘i genuinely believe he is a victim of drugs himself, the scourge of our society.
‘Most of my friends say if he killed their daughter, he wouldn’t have made it to court, but there’s the reality here … nothing is going to bring Claire back.
Mr Drury added: ‘ She had a choice in life. i tried desperately to get her away from bad people. Her choice of male partners was appalling...for the last two years of her life she was on a rollercoaster to hell.
‘She had gone so far down the road, her rational thinking had gone. it was like having a daughter i didn’t know any more.’ Perrett injected 55ml of the drug cocktail into Miss Drury in May last year before giving himself 135ml. She died after falling unconscious on Perrett’s bed at his YMCA hostel in Cheltenham. Paramedics tried to revive her but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
He was sentenced to six years at gloucester Crown Court on January 29. On the day of her death, Miss Drury – who was studying for a PhD in biomedical science – had visited a doctor in the hope of getting help with her drug problems so she could finish her work.
But later that day she withdrew £30 from a cashpoint in order to pay for the ‘snowball’ from Perrett.
Mr Drury, who is separated from Miss Drury’s mother, added: ‘i tried many times to get Claire off drugs and lived with her for several months at one stage.
‘Another time i helped her pay off a £150 drug debt.
‘But as time went on, i realised the effect the substances had on her brain. no longer was she the girl i knew, the talented singer and intelligent student.
‘For the last year she wouldn’t speak any reasonable sense, until our last conversation, when she was better than she had been for a while.
‘it was almost as though that was the end chapter. A few days later she was dead.’
He told how it took around five weeks to get her body back from the authorities so the family could have her funeral, adding: ‘She will never grow old and my memories of her are frozen in time.
‘We miss her and i feel for the rest of the family. Her smile lives on forever.’
Miss Drury, a former pupil of Solihill School in the West Midlands, was exceptionally talented at science.
She was two years ahead of her class at the age of eight and went on to do a degree in marketing before studying a PhD in biomedical science.
Perrett initially denied involvement in Claire’s death until his trial, changing his plea to guilty in January.
Mr Drury, a former champion speed walker, is planning to walk from John O’groats to Land’s End to mark the year since his daughter’s death and to raise funds for drug, alcohol and child-related causes.
‘Rollercoaster to hell’’