Man suffers heart attack and dies hours after girlfriend smuggles zombie-drug Spice into psychiatric hospital for him
A woman charged in the death of her boyfriend has shared details of how her boyfriend pestered and forced her to smuggle him drugs while he was admitted in a psychiatric hospital. The 28-year-old Victoria Bateman sneaked in the drug Spice into the Humber Centre for Forensic Psychiatry in Jan 2018 for Samuel Buckley.
Just hours after she had given him the drug, Buckley had a heart attack and had to be rushed to Hull Royal Infirmary where he passed away the next day. Bateman was then charged with the supply of a class B drug and pleaded guilty to the same. The Hull Crown Court recently heard how Bateman was very remorseful for giving Buckley the drug in the tragic and extremely unfortunate case which took place early last year, stated a report by The Sun.
Prosecutor Stephen Welsh said, "This case is around tragic circumstances. Suspicion immediately fell on the defendant and she was arrested and she explained the background that she had been asked to get drugs for him. She initially said no but she eventually gave in. She accepted that those drugs may have contributed to his death. She showed significant amounts of remorse for her actions."
"She was present at the time the life support was turned off," Welsh added. The court also heard that Buckley's mother had found a packet of drugs in his pocket after he had died which then led to Bateman being questioned. "It’s a very sad case, there has been a tragic loss here, the defendant is conscious of that. The defendant cannot bear legal responsibility for the death but she does feel a moral responsibility," Welsh shared.
"She's very sorry for what happened. She knows that nothing she can say will mitigate the loss felt by those closest to him. This has affected her very badly too. She's been undergoing counseling to come to terms with her part in this. She is effectively of good character, she works part-time in a shop, she has a six-year-old daughter who she is the primary carer for. The defendant hopes now, while this will always be on her mind, she hopes to move on and put this behind her," Welsh continued.
"Whatever sentence is passed she will have to live with this for the rest of her life," Welsh said. The recorder Ben Nolan QC also stressed that he could not sentence Bateman for Buckley's death but only for supplying the drug. Nolan shared, "You have pleaded guilty to supplying a drug of class B to another. You immediately admitted what you had done, you told the police you felt pressurized but Mr. Buckley made you feel you were in the wrong in not supplying them and in the end you gave in and supplied Spice on this one and only occasion."
The court was also told how Buckley had made it very clear that he was capable of sourcing the drug from other sources. Bateman was sentenced to a community order for two years along with 80 hours of unpaid work which needed to be performed in this period.
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