Alamy
A grieving mum branded a drug dealer a 'coward' as she confronted him at her daughter's inquest and demanded he reveal who supplied the Ecstasy which killed her.
Thomas Donelan refused to name the Mr Big behind the distribution of the lethal batch of MDMA that 16-year-old Serena Harding took.
So her mum, Diana – a drugs counsellor - confronted him in the witness box, saying: "Does it not trouble you that the people who sold you this drug are spreading it all over the place? More people will die like my daughter.
"She would have had a future, a life. Does this not prick your conscience?
"It's these low life you are working for. They don't tell you what goes into what you are buying.
"Do you not want to stop this? You would be a coward."
But 20-year-old Donelan, who was jailed for supplying the drug to Serena and friends, refused to reveal his source.
"I won't tell you where I got it from," he replied to Diana.
"I can't tell you. It is not an issue of having a conscience. It is not in any disrespect of this girl's memory."
Student Serena, who had Crohn's disease, took the MDMA for the first time on August 21 last year to impress Michael Millington, 19, who she had a crush on.
The pair bought £20 worth each off Donelan. But she collapsed soon after swallowing around one quarter of a gram of the class A drug in a park and had a fit. She died later in hospital.
Diana, 47, from Warrington, Cheshire, told the inquest in Stockport, Greater Manchester: "It was such a horrendous shock. I still don't believe it now that she would have taken it.
"She swore to me that she would never take drugs as she knew what I did."
She believes her daughter succumbed to peer pressure. Donelan, of Manchester, was jailed for two years in July last year. Millington got a 12 months suspended sentence for his part in the tragedy.
Recording a verdict of misadventure coroner John Pollard urged other youngsters to avoid MDMA.
He said: "You simply don t know the purity or strength and you do not know the affects it will have on you."
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