'Her Son Dealt The Drugs That Killed My Daughter & Now We've Teamed Up' | This Morning

[Music] but first in may 2019 15 year old leah hayes collapsed in a car park after taking the drug mdma that night she lost her life well the 17 year old boy who dealt her the illegal drug connor kirkwood was arrested and jailed for 21 months the consequences that night uh had on both teenagers families it's hard to comprehend but today both leah and connor's mothers are here side by side in the hope that they can prevent any parent having to live through such a tragedy well kerry and tammy join us now good morning to both of us thank you so much for being here i know this is difficult but there's an important message within this so kerry let's start off with you first of all i'm so sorry for your loss 15. it's just too too young by far um what was she like she was she was funny she was lively she was full of it she was she was 15 so she was she was quite mouthy sometimes she was laundry she was pushing boundaries but she she knew how to live and she she had the best time all the time was was there any hint of drugs in her life no nothing and there was even i mean i wasn't there that night i was in hospital and i was pregnant with my m my little girl she's nearly two um so i wasn't um i wasn't home yeah but my partner he says there was nothing it was just a normal saturday night and she was had a friend in the room music on they were going out and so they were going out and that's what she did she'd gone out with her friends and then as you'd been in the hospital that morning as you say and you had a phone call at 9 9pm to say that she wasn't well that she wasn't feeling well and i guess you're expecting you're going to turn up there's always that moment when your teenager drinks too much and you've got to take them home and scoop them up and look after them that's what i thought i'd be doing so we pulled up in the car park and she was on the floor um my partner stayed in the car again we thought she'd drunk too much um and i was going to be pulling into the car i got halfway there and i called him over i said something not right i knew something wasn't right um [Music] i got to her and she was pretty still and she said mum so she was still conscious um but it didn't take long for her to go and you call the ambulance the ambulance is slightly cold as far as i'm aware follow the ambulance to hospital and you knew by the time you got to hospital yeah you'd lost her yeah um i always think i think she passed in the in the park but as i walked into the hospital everyone had their heads down and police the nurses they all they all had their heads down so i knew you um this was as you say two years ago i mean this is still incredibly raw for you i don't think you ever get over no loss like that could have happened yesterday well uh okay and when you um sorry when you when you um hear that it's for a reason like that that she had that night experimented that she'd taken this mdma and that was the cause of her passing how did you feel um i was angry with her my first thought but i was angry with her i thought how why would she do this yeah um now i think she was just ignorant she was naive she was 15 she mdma is classed as the party drug so she was 15. not 15 you hear the word party it's fun and i think she'd seen people do it and yeah she just thought she was going to be having a bit of fun on certain today well at the other end of the sofa is the other side of the story and it's tammy connor's mum um so same question really that that we asked kerry um what what's connor like what sort of guy was he at that stage of his life how old was he he was 17 when leah passed away but the county lines started grooming him at um 14. so he was 14 until 17 well 17 and before then he was rugby football any sport he could get his hands on he was that active boy running around you know climbing a tree whatever he could do and then um we he came home from boarding school on weekends and that's when we would see the school holidays we would start seeing a notice and change in him bring him home we we thought maybe just maybe home a little bit more brought him home we went to local school and more older people were hanging around we were told you know his he used to have a big huge smile and that started to fade so he wasn't as confident with his sports anymore and things and so i noticed and i started going to the school the school noticed he was having some problems adjusting conor ham is on the autism spectrum so we had a prevent worker come in and she was working with you know his anxiety and some behavior issues but they just see where your weaknesses and its kids introducing kids to these adults that are using them and then that's when you know i started noticing just it was just small things you didn't have a lot of money didn't have new foot he didn't need things like that it was just little things that just didn't sit right at home and this um this county lines thing that you're talking about this is this is dealers this is drug gangs which are using children and kind of or underage vulnerable people um in kind of small towns and villages to kind of spread the sales of drugs into different areas and he was kind of i guess groomed recruited into this um he still made a choice he still made a choice to sell the drugs that day and it was your daughter that brought the drug and that's what led to her death you got a knock on the door from the police looking for him didn't you and you'd heard the next day that this tragedy had struck in the local area but you thought that these two things were not connected not connected at all so we had a knock on the door in the middle of the night the police were there and your worst nightmare is in the middle of the night you know it's your child so conor was supposed to be at a friend's house already talk to the parents they were going to be home so everything that you do as a parent to make sure is safe and they want to know where he was they said to me um you know i asked what was the issue and they said they couldn't tell me because he was 17. now somebody's he's a minor and they said well it's nothing to worry about just when he comes home can you call 101. so because they said it's nothing to worry about and they had no urgency i even told them where he was they had no urgency we just thought maybe got into a scuffle with one of his friends and maybe he took off from where he was and got a hold they they knew where he was told them that i just didn't go to get him so um i got a hold of him finally and i was reading stuff on facebook and just thinking where is he this poor just poor child and then he confided when he came back did you call the police yeah yeah yeah and so what what they babe you say that they just burst into the house and they bust into the house the northern door and i said can you just wait i have a puppy i wanted to kind of shove into where he wouldn't be and i don't know if they thought i was going to be hiding him or anything um but they came through got upstairs and got connor and brought him out how did you feel when you realized that the story that you've been reading on facebook was actually linked to your son a nightmare like you just go numb because you just think how can my child be part of this senior nightmare i was angry because i was already yelling at social services i was yelling at police i called the police on my own son many times and didn't get the support we needed so i was a mix of anger that you know things could have been put in place well he was um arrested and in november 2020 he was sentenced to 21 months in a young offenders institution he was released after six months before a mixture of things good behavior because it's the covid crisis meant that there wasn't staff available so he he came out but what what we're really here to talk about today is is this situation because a lot of people will be watching this thinking my god this is remarkable but i don't quite understand kerry how you can sit this close to the mother of the child that's responsible for the death of your own child i understand how people think that and i thought about myself i thought um why do i want to meet this lady it was first um talked about through and the crime commissioner and they introduced us to um restorative justice yeah and we had a lot of meetings with them individually and they said when they thought it was ready for us to meet and i've still under the thought why do i want me or why do i want to meet her and i was sure it would make me feel better yes yeah i made me realize we are two moms we have victims in different ways yes but we are victims and we want the same thing were you nervous to meet kerry very nervous because i had a lot of guilt you know my child was involved to me i was the drugma drug dealer's mum you know the scum of the earth didn't have control of your child really really nervous but we just sat down i think restorative justice did really well because they each we talked to once a week i think it was and they just made it you know our story to tell each other to understand each other and we just said hello and that we said it just flew didn't it just yeah it flowed and so by being together now and this is together you want to make changes you want to spread awareness you want to educate people what this is your most your platform what is it you want to say so the first thing was for drugs campaign and it was then called no mdma and it was for parents for teachers for adults to know what they're talking about because i i didn't know with leo we'd spoke about class a drugs we spoke about ecstasy but not mdma not the actual drug mdma and i think because i didn't know about it i'm still learning now about it um and i think it's just to teach the people that are talking to our children and might not be the parents because you know at 15 you don't want to talk to your mom and dad change changed the association with the party drug this this is not a party what we're looking for dangerous so for what to do if you get yourself into an emergency situation or someone around you is in a situation what to do call an ambulance get help as quickly as you possibly yeah i think there was a lot of friends at the park that i know leah some friends and um if they knew what to do if they knew they thought she was just being silly um they were 15 they were children themselves but if they knew you were things you said um tammy earlier on uh that connor had a huge big smile i think was the way you said it um what is it this done to him no his smile's coming back i see glimpse of it he's really concentrating right now he works a 48 hour week he does college work at night he goes into the gym so he's extremely focused right now so everyone smile get a glimpse of his smile and his sporting love for sports coming back but i still see he's anxious he's explained to me sometimes how his body feels how he's anxious his heart's pounding you know so i see that vulnerability still but we he has a long way to go we still have you know trying to change his mindset because these guys are still out there the county lines are still there they still have a grip on they brainwash their children so much he doesn't do anything with them but they're still in the back every time he goes out i'm like will they find him will they get him will they get him back in you you just even though he's 19 you never stop caring but it's just that panic but after what's happened what after what you you're just discussing here we're talking about sofa do you think they could hook him back in i don't know they're very clever people i hope not i can only put in everything that i know and supports him right now he's so focused that i think what they call people um when they get them back into county lines they call him clean skin so now conor's not a person that's never been affected by police so he's watched so i think that's a good thing because they won't want to i'm hoping that's a deterrent but i'm hoping also when we um leah's law that kerry is petitioning for comes in it's for the under 16 that we can't be selling drugs to people that are under 16 you can't go get it you can't go get alcohol this is your campaign yeah yes um i think um when we were doing court and talking to the police and talking to people at court and the word consent was brought up a lot um and connor and the other boy didn't get a long sentence because leah consented and obviously at the time everything was going on and my head wasn't clear and a few months later i was thinking how did she consent she was 15. she couldn't go and buy alcohol she couldn't buy cigarettes she couldn't consent to having sex so how can she consent to take in a class a joke and it still doesn't sit with me it doesn't make sense no no no do you think this should have been um sent down for considerably longer than the yeah but tammy knows that yeah um connor says it to himself yeah he knows we were all shocked in court in fact i was quite shocked to know what they got anything because he said again that they got any time at all because i was because leah consented and that's what you're campaigning yeah yeah well good luck with the campaign thank you the petition is out there thank you both and thank you for being such a great example of what when two people who've been through such a horrible terrible time when you come together that you can create something positive thank you thank you

Channel: This Morning

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Id: caGV2t_T6Mo

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021