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Drug addict Kelly Emery who killed son with methadone died of overdose

12:56, 07 June 2019

updated: 11:50, 10 June 2019

An addict who killed her son by feeding him methadone died of a heroin overdose, an inquest heard.

Kelly Emery was found face down on the floor of her boyfriend’s bedroom at an address in Boxley Road, Maidstone, on October 2017.

Paramedics twice revived her after she suffered a cardiac arrest, but were not able to save her after she had a third episode in the ambulance on the way to hospital.

Two-year-old Fenton Hogan died after being fed methadone
Two-year-old Fenton Hogan died after being fed methadone

An inquest into her death, at Maidstone's Archbishop's Palace today, heard a post mortem determined she had died from morphine toxicity.

Emery, 37, originally from Birmingham, had been released from prison just a month beforehand after serving a little over two years of a six-year jail sentence.

She was convicted in 2015 for the manslaughter her two-year-old son Fenton Hogan after feeding him heroin substitute methadone to keep him quiet, in 2013.

She refused to give evidence during her trial at Nottingham Crown Court, insisting she had never given her son the drug – despite being negligent in leaving bottles of it lying around the house.

Kelly Emery died at her boyfriend's home
Kelly Emery died at her boyfriend's home

The inquest hearing, held at Archbishop's Palace in Maidstone today, revealed that on October 11, 2017 - the day before her death - Emery told her new boyfriend she wanted to "score some drugs" to get relief from chronic back pain.

He unsuccessfully tried to put her off the idea, she met with a drug dealer and bought £15 worth of heroin and the pair went back to his hostel where she injected.

That night staff at the hostel went to the room to get her to leave, enforcing a no-visitors after 10pm policy.

Emery's boyfriend went to move her but found she was foaming at the mouth and unresponsive.

Paramedics arrived at just after 11pm and, despite hours of CPR and administering medicine designed to block the deadly effects of an overdose, she was pronounced dead at 1.40am on October 12.

Coroner Katrina Hepburn said: "The pathologist surmised that returning to drugs after a period of abstinence led to an overdose."

The coroner concluded Emery died of an unintended drugs overdose.

Read more: All the latest news from Maidstone

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