Heroin killed a loving son

Jan 17 2008 by Emma Davison, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A MAN told his mother he loved her hours before she found him dead, an inquest heard.

Eileen Maciver couldn’t wake her son Anthony after he stayed the night at her home at Elim Walk in Dewsbury.

The inquest, in Huddersfield yesterday, was told that Mr Maciver, 38, died on December 21 after a heroin overdose.

The divorced father-of-three, a former lorry driver, had had a drink problem for several years and had a history of injecting amphetamines.

His drinking led to him being diag-nosed with acute inflammation of the pancreas three years ago.

The inquest heard a statement from Mrs Maciver, who said her son was with her hours before he died.

She said that he had visited her earlier that day and returned at about 10.30pm.

Mrs Maciver said her son staggered in and had blood on him from a cut on his chin, which he said was caused when he fell over.

She said she cleaned up the cut and her son went upstairs into his brother’s bedroom, where he was sleeping that night.

She added: “He then came into my bedroom, said that he loved me and gave me a kiss.”

Tragically those were the last words that Mrs Maciver heard from her son.

Early the next morning she went in his room to find him still dressed from the night before. But he was unresponsive and had froth round his mouth.

There were no obvious signs that he had taken drugs in the room, but later Mr Maciver’s brother, Paul, found a pack of new syringes, with two missing, under the mattress.

Dr Kevin Birkbeck, who performed the post-mortem at Dewsbury District Hospital, said he found six marks on Mr Maciver’s hips and upper thigh where he had injected himself and that his lungs were congested with fluid.

In his blood and urine there were traces of heroin metabolites, diazepam and codeine.

Dr Birkbeck said the dosage of heroin would have been fatal and, mixed with the effects of alcohol caused Mr Maciver’s central nervous system to fail.

He added that Mr Maciver, of West Wells Crescent in Ossett, would have been likely to have been killed by quite a low level of the drug because he was not a regular heroin user.

The inquest also heard that in the past Mr Maciver had tried to harm himself by taking two paracetamol overdoses and cutting his wrists.

His fiancee, Maria Deakin said she was aware that he had tried to hurt himself before, but added: “He told me he could never leave me.”

Coroner Roger Whittaker recorded that Mr Maciver died as a result of drug abuse, adding that he was “a naive user of that substance”.