CORRIE STAR ‘TO BLAME FOR GIRL’S DRUG DEATH’
Lover says parents stopped him carrying her to medics
CORONATION Street star John Michie was blamed by his daughter’s rapper lover for her drug-trip death, a jury heard yesterday.
THE boyfriend of Corrie star John Michie’s daughter has blamed the actor and his wife for her drug death.
Ceon Broughton, 29, told police he wanted to carry their daughter Louella to a hospital unit when she fell ill after taking the party drug
2C-P at the Bestival music festival. But he said John, 62, and his wife Carol,
68, had stopped him.
Instead they told him to go and fetch help from someone in a “high vis” vest.
A jury at Winchester Crown Court heard that by the time he finally went for help she was already dead.
He denies her manslaughter and supplying her with the Class A drug that killed her. Questioned by police the day after the tragedy, Broughton denied he gave Louella drugs or took any himself.
He told officers: “I think she bought something – she bought LSD or something. We was just having fun and just chilling in the woods. She was tripping and then she said she had acid.
“She was fine at first. Then it kind of spiralled. I was trying to calm her down.
“She was rolling around in stinging nettles and stuff.
“I called her mum and she told me to get to someone in high vis. Her mum and dad said they were on their way.
“I wanted to carry her. I wanted to carry her myself.
“But they told me to get help. I would have carried her myself.’’ Actor John, who also starred in BBC dramas Holby City and Casualty, watched the hearing from the public gallery wearing a T-shirt bearing a photo of his daughter.
The prosecution alleges Broughton failed in his “duty of care” to his girlfriend by refusing to get help when she started shouting, hitting herself, rolling in nettles and eating thorns in a wood after storms had halted the performances on stage.
Instead, he shot videos of her “bad trip” on his mobile for up to six hours.
He also took three live photos of her after she died an hour before her 25th birthday, the prosecution claims. Her parents dashed 130 miles from their London home to the Dorset site after hearing her “screeching like a wild animal” in a phone call from the scene.
But they arrived too late to prevent the yoga teacher, dancer and model becoming the first person ever to die from a 2C-P overdose. Medical experts said she could have been saved if she had received help sooner.
The prosecution alleges Broughton had not sought help out of “selfishness and self-preservation” because he was serving a suspended jail sentence and knew he would be imprisoned if he was caught supplying drugs. The trial continues.
I wanted to carry her myself ...but they told me to get help