Legal News
Jail for heroin addict who helped depressed man to end his life (6 July 2015)
Date: 06/07/2015
A 36-year-old heroin addict who helped a man to die by injecting him with heroin has been jailed on a conviction of negligent manslaughter at Manchester Crown Court.
Manchester Evening News reports that Lyndsay Anne Jones had tried to help Philip Makinson take his own life on two occasions by injecting him with heroin.
Mr Makinson was suffering from depression after the deaths of his mother and sister-in-law, the failure of a relationship and the collapse of his business in late 2012.
Mr Makinson had previously made attempts himself to take his life, including cutting his wrists in November 2012. After this he enlisted the help of heroin addict Jones to help him end his life.
The first attempt by Jones to help him take his own life failed, however, after Jones bought the Class A drug, but kept some of the heroin for herself and injected Mr Makinson with the rest.
He did not die but was left seriously ill and admitted to hospital.
A month after the first attempt, Jones obtained more heroin and injected Mr Makinson again, leaving him to die in his Bolton flat alone.
His body was discovered on 1 February 2013.
After the second attempt to help him die, Jones had “panicked”, Manchester Crown Court had heard.
She had returned to the flat to cover her tracks – and had taken Mr Makinson’s mobile phone to prevent incriminating evidence about the plot to help him die being uncovered.
Jones was eventually shopped to the police by her former partner, however, who had recorded her admitting her role in Mr Makinson’s death and had handed the tape over to the police after an argument with Jones.
At Manchester Crown Court, Jones – of no fixed address – pleaded guilty to gross negligent manslaughter and was jailed for four-and-a-half years.
After sentencing, Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jackson said:
“This was not like the cases of assisted suicide you read about in the media, involving men and women with terminal illnesses who decide to end their suffering in a dignified and peaceful manner.
“There was nothing dignified or peaceful about Mr Makinson’s death.
“He needed psychological help, but was instead injected with heroin and left alone to die by a woman whose primary motivation was to obtain drugs for her own use.
“This was not a mercy killing – Jones was not motivated by altruism, but by greed, and greed alone.”
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