The daughter of Holby City actor John Michie had a “fatal attraction” to her boyfriend who collected “souvenirs” of her final moments on his mobile phone, a court has heard.
Ceon Broughton is on trial at Winchester Crown Court accused of being responsible for the death of 24-year-old Louella Fletcher-Michie.
The yoga and dance teacher took class A party drug 2-CP at Bestival in Dorset on 10 September, 2017, and died in woodland an hour before her 25th birthday.
Broughton, 29, of Enfield, north London, denies manslaughter by gross negligence and supplying the drug.
William Mousley QC, prosecuting, said in his closing speech to the jury that Broughton had “lied and lied” in order to “dodge responsibility” for Fletcher-Michie’s death.
The court has heard Broughton filmed Louella on his mobile phone as her condition deteriorated, and the prosecution say he failed to take “reasonable” steps to save her life.
They claim he did not seek help because he did not want to be found in breach of a suspended prison sentence handed to him a month earlier.
Mousley said: “Her attraction to Ceon Broughton, her feelings towards Ceon Broughton, turned out to be a fatal attraction.”
He said the reason “he let Louella down so badly was to save himself and perhaps even to collect souvenirs of the fatal evening on his phone, and that we suggest is shocking and it’s despicable negligence of the highest order.”
He said that Broughton had admitted “bumping up” the drugs given to Fletcher-Michie which resulted in him giving an “excessive dose” to a “vulnerable” person, who “had a very careful attitude” towards drugs.
Mousley added: “Any reasonable person, being prudent and careful having given Louella drugs on that afternoon or evening, would have appreciated the risk in seeing her reaction and deterioration and that her life was in danger.
“And by taking reasonable steps, quite simply her life could have been saved.”
He said the defendant had attempted to evade responsibility by blaming “everyone except himself”.
He added: “The final dodge of responsibility was declining to give evidence, not providing any explanation for her death, not doing anything to meet the compelling case against him.”
Mousley said that Broughton did not take action to help Fletcher-Michie, even when she persuaded him to call her parents.
He said: “It was not a call for help, it was an empty gesture, a sop to Louella’s demands to call her mum.
“Ceon was not expressing concern or worry when he spoke to them, he was saying it was all fine.
“It was what the Michie family could hear in the background that gave them concern, it was how Louella was behaving in the background, the screeching like an animal, incoherent, and the Michie family, more than one of them, telling him to get her to the medical tent.”
He added: “This was not him trying to get help but the other way around.”
The trial continues.