GUILTY of killing her own daughter
This week Claire Johnson was jailed in order to reflect on the fact she left her own 21-yearold daughter to die.
The Scarborough woman wept as she was handed a 32-month sentence after leavi ng Natasha to die f rom an overdose – while she decided to go to bed.
Police have now vowed to “eradicate” the town’s drug problem. One judge claimed it was at the worst level he has ever known. Johnson, 41, was
jailed alongside Daniel Kedge, who supplied Natasha with the heroin she fatally injected herself with on the evening of May 22.
The victim’s grandmother Denise Johnson, who had custody of Natasha since she was 13, said her heart had been “ripped out” by the tragedy.
“Natasha was my world, my life - life will not be the same without her,” she told Leeds Crown Court, before the duo were sentenced on Monday.
Johnson admitted the manslaughter by gross negligence of the ex- Raincliffe School pupil, after failing to call for an ambulance for her daughter after she collapsed - an act, the court heard, that would have almost certainly saved her life.
The court heard she had arrived at her mother’s flat in Market Way that evening with Kedge and another man.
After Kedge, who was a heroin addict, went and bought some of the drug he returned and took some before allowing her to inject herself.
Mr Justice Globe said Natasha had already been drinking and taken Valium tablets and the purity of the heroin was high.
There was no evidence she had previously done that to herself and the effect on her was almost immediate.
“Natasha wasn’t a heroin addict, far from it - she was a lovely girl,” said an Old Town source, who knew Natasha.
“I can’t imagine she would have ever injected herself, she wasn’t the type.”
But the court heard that she did inject herself, causing her to collapse before struggling to breath while Kedge gave her mouth to mouth.
Her mum had even asked if the struggles to breath was her daughter’s death rattle.
Kedge told the jury he thought she was all right when he l eft about an hour l ater telling her mother to call an ambulance if her condition deteriorated.
“When he left Natasha was in your sole care,” the judge told Johnson. “You failed to get her any medical attention, you failed to observe her closely or at all. You went to sleep and when you woke up she was dead.” If an ambulance had been called the likelihood is the effect of the heroin could have been reversed and she would have survived.”
“In the circumstances your omission was therefore extremely serious.”
As her mother, the householder of the premises where she took drugs and the person in whose care she was in such a collapsed condition she was negligent.
“You agreed to keep a watchful eye on her, you did nothing and she died.”
He said he accepted John- son was not only suffering the grief of having lost her daughter “you have the additional guilt of your gross inaction being causative of her death, that will live with you for the rest of your life long after you have served the sentence I have imposed.”
He told Kedge, 41 of Carlton Terrace, Halifax, he accepted he had shared the drug with Natasha for no financial gain but that had put her i n the danger that anyone did supplying drugs.
“However you are not being sentenced for her death,” he was told, having previously been cleared of manslaughter.
That had no doubt had a chastening effect on him and was possibly behind his motive for co-operating with drug recovery programme in Kirklees.
But jailing Kedge for 16 months, the judge told him “I find it impossible not to impose an immediate sentence of imprisonment.
“You supplied strong heroin to a young girl you knew little about, who was not an addict in the circumstances where she was drunk and had been taking Valium.”
Simon Phillips QC prosecuting told the court at 9.30am on May 23 Johnson had purchased a can of special brew at a nearby newsagents.
She was a bit tearful saying her daughter had died. She was on the sofa and she could not wake her up.
She said someone else had called an ambulance.
When she told two other women this one of them got her mother a trained first aider to go back to the flat where they found Natasha cold on a sofa. Johnson told police she had covered her arm with a towel during the night because the arm seemed cold.
She said she thought she was just sleeping at that time.
The court heard Natasha died from depression of her central nervous system caused by heroin toxicity enhanced by alcohol and Diazepam.
A f ormer heroin addict herself Johnson told police she had not taken any heroin for several years but ha d bee n drinking and taking prescription drugs the night before.
Simon Bickler QC representing her said that had made her very intoxicated and affected “her actions or lack of them”.
And the decision to jail the duo comes in the same week Judge Stephen Ashurst warned of the impact hard drug dealing was having i n Scarborough.
“In the eight years I have been sitting at York Crown Court, there has been a significant escalation in Class A drug-dealing in Scarborough,” he said, passing sentence in a separate trial.
“This has had a huge impact on the town i tself and fuelled not only acquisitive crime, but also violence, misery and ruined lives.”
And Supt Glyn Payne, Commander for Scarborough said: “We remain relentless in our pursuit of those criminals who wish to come and supply drugs in Scarborough.
“There is no safe place to deal drugs here and we will not stop in our efforts to eradicate this problem from Scarborough.”