Dealer involved in drug-death tragedy avoids jail sentence
A DRUG pusher has said he wished he was dead instead of local footballer Greg Alexander.
The 25-year-old star of Selkirk Victoria died after taking a mephedrone bomb which he had been given by Alistair Tough.
Tough, 37, used to live in Gaitschaw Lane but has said he’ll never return to live in the town.
At the local sheriff court on Monday friends of Tough applauded when a sheriff told him he wasn’t going to jail.
Tough had earlier admitted being concerned in the supply of mephedrone between March 2 and 5 last year at houses in Scott Crescent and Gaitschaw Lane.
One of the five people supplied with the Class B drug was the former soldier Mr Alexander.
He died in hospital just hours after taking the drug at a party in Scott Crescent following an afternoon in the pub watching a Celtic v Rangers Scottish cup replay.
Sheriff Kevin Drummond had been told that experts could not say he died as a direct result of taking the drug supplied by Tough.
Tough’s lawyer, Matthew Berlowe, told an earlier hearing: “After investigation, the Crown can no way attribute the death of this individual to my client.”
On Monday, Mr Berlowe said he had previously mentioned “pre-existing health difficulties” suffered by Mr Alexander, but it had since been brought to his attention that this was not correct.
Mr Berlowe said it had been a special condition of his client’s bail that he did not enter Selkirk, which was for his own safety.
And the lawyer went on: “My client has extreme regret and says he would have preferred to take the place of Mr Alexander. He says it is the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up, and the last thing he thinks about at night.
“Although he was brought up here in Selkirk, he will never return to live here.
“This has had a profound effect on him, and he has disassociated himself from the sub-culture of drug use and has not abused any substances since this incident.
“The cause of death has been established as toxicity from alcohol, cocaine, a class-A drug, and mephedrone, and that is a factor which must be taken into account. A few months prior to this [offence] mephedrone was a legal drug.”
Sheriff Drummond had been told earlier that after the football match a group of friends had gone back to a house in Scott Crescent shortly after 11pm.
Procurator fiscal Morag McLintock said the group was asked by Tough, “Anyone want a line?”, before white powder was placed on a CD case at the house.
She went on: “Everyone, with the exception of one individual, snorted a line of the drug known as mephedrone. At sometime after 1am into March 3, the accused asked if anyone would like a mephedrone bomb. The accused and the deceased both swallowed one.
“Around 15 to 20 minutes later, the deceased’s behaviour was noted to change and he began acting erratically. They assisted in putting him in another room and put him in the recovery position. They checked on him a number of times and he had been snoring, but that changed and concerns were raised.”
The prosecutor continued: “An ambulance was called, but the paramedics were not informed about what had happened earlier. He was taken to Borders General Hospital where at 03.52 hours his life was pronounced extinct.”
Police obtained a search warrant for Tough’s home at Gaitschaw Lane on March 5, when three bags of mephedrone, worth £24, were found. A business card and mobile phones were examined, which contained the drug’s street name of “Bubble”.
Ms McLintock revealed: “With regard to the post-mortem report, it is fair to say there is not one single cause of death. The deceased was found to have mephedrone in his system, but it cannot be identified by the Crown as what directly killed him.”
She said if there was a direct link between the death and the mephedrone bomb – which involves swallowing a package of the amphetamine-type drug from cigarette papers instead of the usual snorting – then Tough would have been facing much different charges in a higher court. She added: “According to the post-mortem report, the cause of death was alcohol, cocaine and mephedrone toxicity.”
And she said the other four people who took the drug lines that night did not suffer any consequences. Commenting on the business cards found in Tough’s home, Sheriff Drummond commented: “I am concerned about the blatant nature of these.”
Tough’s lawyer told the court: “His position is that they were really more of a joke than a real entrepreneurial offer to sell drugs.
“He had a few cards printed in a half-joking manner. If he was a hardened criminal drug dealer he would not be printing business cards for all to see.
After retiring to consider his sentence, Sheriff Drummond told Tough: “The issue confronting the court is a stark one. You are a 37-year-old first offender who has pled guilty to being concerned in the supply of a class B drug – a drug which was not a prohibited substance only a short time before this offence. What makes the matter more difficult is twofold.
“Firstly, the substance which you supplied was a contributory factor in a cocktail of alcohol and drugs taken by the deceased, which led to his death.
“The plea of guilty does not libel that you caused or contributed to his death.
“The business card, I accept, may have been seen as some kind of joke, but assuming that is the case, it demonstrates a cavalier attitude to the use and supply of drugs. Notwithstanding the highly-publicised deaths of users, people are still prepared to engage in the use of these substances, and as such are gambling with their own lives, and the lives of others, on a daily basis.”
And he told Tough: “The issue is a stark choice – custody or a community-based disposal.
“A custodial sentence would require to be at the lower end of the scale, given your age and previous good record, and by statute you would serve only half of what was imposed.”
The sheriff concluded: “The safety of the public does not require your imprisonment.”
The sentence was greeted by applause from a section of the public gallery.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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