Louella Fletcher-Michie court case: Boyfriend told friend 'if fam asks, say a random gave us 2C-P' as woman was dying from overdose, jurors told
Friend Ezra Campbell and Bestival staff gave evidence at court in Winchester
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Ceon Broughton, the man accused of manslaughter over the death by drug overdose of Louella Fletcher-Michie at a music festival, tried six times to help her on his own before calling an ambulance, Winchester Crown Court has heard.
Mr Broughton, 29 and from Enfield in north London, is on trial and also accused of supplying the Class A drug 2C-P to Ms Fletcher-Michie, who was found dead at Bestival at 1am on 11 September 2017, which should have been her 25th birthday.
The court heard that Mr Broughton filmed Louella as she overdosed at the event in Dorset and subsequently exchanged panicked text messages with a friend, instructing him: “If the fam asks, say a random gave us 2C-P.”
As he took the stand at Winchester Crown Court on Thursday, the girl’s father, Holby City actor John Michie, had looked over to the dock and stared hard at his daughter’s boyfriend. He told the court: “Louella loved Ceon. I don’t think he loved her.
“I don’t know how you could ever say you loved someone if you have let them die in front of you.”
Mr Michie wept in the witness stand as he recalled the day of her death and his final phone call with Ms Fletcher-Michie.
He told the jury: “The thing that I most remember was that Louella seemed very distressed. I could hear her in the background shouting things like ‘I hate you, I don’t trust you’, obviously referring to Ceon.
“I’ve never heard her speak in that way. It almost didn’t sound like her.”
Mr Broughton’s voice, on loudspeaker, sounded “watery”, “without energy in it” and he did not seem “compos mentis”, Mr Michie said.
He added: “He didn’t seem to be concerned, I thought. Obviously any normal person would be concerned.”
Gemma Thorogood explains she was working at Bestival in September 2017. She was a creative producer, specialising in "putting food and wellbeing into the festival".
She "put craft" into the ambient forest area, she explains.
She overheard Ms Moedt's telephone conversation with Carol. The call was received in the festival's production office.
Olivia Moedt passed Ms Thorogood the description of Louella that she received from Carol, the court hears.
Explaining why she decided a search should be made of the ambient forest area, Ms Thorogood says: "We would sometimes refer to the ambient forest as the woods. That was the woods I knew of on the site. The woods, in my mind, I understood as the ambient forest."
The court heard that in fact Louella and Broughton were in woods outside the official festival site.
Ms Thorogood said: "Bestival didn't have access to [those] woods.
"We don't even comprehend where the woods stretch to. It isn't on the map."
Later, she said, staff returned to report back to her.
Ms Thorogood told the court: "[They said] they had done a thorough search of the ambient forest and no-one of that description could be found."
A statement from Olivia Moedt's boss Liam Mayet is being read to the jury by Simon Jones, prosecuting.
In the statement, made in September 2017, Mr Mayet said: "All of our thoughts were that 'woodland' must be the ambient forest part of the site.
"It is the only wooded area of the site that customers are allowed to access."
Mr Harrington tells the court he was on a cigarette break from working at Stacey's Bar when he saw a man "with short dreadlocked hair" emerge from a wooded area.
Mr Harrington tells the court: "He asked to borrow a torch so he could go and look for his girlfriend because she had taken an overdose."
He clarifies that the man came from a different wooded area, not the ambient forest.
He explains that this wooded area "was the woods outside [the official festival site]. It was barricaded off by steel gating."
Mr Hrrington said he went with "the gentleman" to search the off-site wooded area.
He kept his own torch and used it to search with the man for 15 minutes, he tells the court.
They searched an area Mr Harrington refers to as "LL28 and a bit into MM28" which was "different from the area where the man emerged from".
"Were you able to find the girlfriend?" asks Mr Jones.
"No," replies Mr Harrington.
He went back to his work position, while his colleague Ryan went to search with the man, he tells the court.