CHILLING text messages were sent by teenagers in a deadly drugs experiment, it has been revealed.
And they were the only insight police had in to the last steps taken by 15-year-old Connor Aston, who died after taking the fatal cocktail of drugs.
An inquest heard how Shelley College student Connor was found dead by his mum amongst a range of different blister packets in his bedroom
His friend, 18-year-old Alex Walker had also taken the drugs, which included Buprenorphine – a heroin substitute – and antidepressants, but survived after being rushed to hospital.
At the teenager’s inquest, Alex told the court he had no recollection of that fatal night and his last memory was of running for a bus in Wakefield a week earlier.
Yesterday, Det Sgt Nigel Gittins ran through text messages Alex had sent to other friends over the course of the evening.
The first text sent at 11.22pm the night before the pair were found read: “Me and Connor have done 35 pills since last night.”
And several minutes later, Alex sent another text which read, “I know surely me and Connor should be like dead.”
Other messages included details about taking loads of “trippy stuff” including “Codeine, Diazepam” and another “prescribed drug that had Opium in it”.
Det Sgt Gittins said: “After speaking to a number of people who were mentioned in the messages, the feelings got back were that the boys had been taking different types of drugs over a period of time and were experimenting with drugs and getting more and more adventurous.”
Alex, who is now 19, denied this and told the coroner that he had not taken a pill before, only cannabis.
Connor’s mum, Michelle Aston, provided Coroner Mr Roger Whittaker with a statement about events leading up to the night.
She said that Connor, who was in the middle of taking his GCSEs, returned from his grandmother’s caravan on June 6 to attend a revision session in preparation for his maths exam.
Alex stayed over Monday and Tuesday night and the pair went out between 9pm and 11pm on Tuesday night.
She said she called goodnight to them, heard the X-box go on and heard them go downstairs to get a drink.
Mrs Aston said she shouted upstairs for the boys to get up at 1.15pm on Wednesday and remembered thinking how loud they were snoring.
She had been out fetching her other children from school when she got a text at 3.45pm from Alex’s girlfriend asking if she knew why he wasn’t answering her phone, of which she said she would check when she got back.
She said: “When I got back I put the other three in the living room watching CBeebies, as I walked up the stairs I could see Connor slumped by the radiator.
“I remember seeing that Connor’s ear was grey and his eyes were still, staring and fixed, and I knew immediately that he had died.
“Alex was face down and he was making a weird gurgling noise.
“I telephoned Mandy, Alex’s mum and said, ‘Get here the boys have done something stupid’.
“Then I called 999 for an ambulance and told the operator my son was dead.She talked me through giving CPR.”
She recalled hearing her younger son trying to come up to the attic but said she kept ushering him downstairs and helping Alex, who was still gurgling.
Within her statement she said she had no idea where the tablets could have come from, although her ex-partner Wayne Lockwood was believed to have been on anti-depressants, she said he removed them when their relationship ended.
She continued: “Connor looked up to Alex – his individuality, he was quite a character, never afraid to be different.
“Connor was a happy and popular boy with a large group of friends.”
Mr Whittaker said: “This has been a difficult case to deal with partly because the primary witness has little or no memory of the pertinent hours.
“There’s suggestion that they may have been left there by Wayne Lockwood but there’s no proof that happened.
“Connor died from Buprenorphine poisoning and mixed drug toxicity.”
Connor’s death was recorded as a result of non-dependant use of drugs,
He said that one good thing that had come from this was that Alex was continuing not to take any form of drugs.
