A MAN who supplied heroin to a homeless painter who died minutes later outside public toilets in the centre of Chelmsford has been jailed for nearly three years.
Unemployed Benjamin English, 29, of Victoria Crescent, Chelmsford, faces two years and nine months behind bars for selling the Class A drug to Steven Hiskey.
Speaking to the Chronicle, however, Mr Hiskey's mother, Susan Hiskey, said police had not told her English had been jailed or that his hearing was rescheduled.
Essex Police have since admitted they failed to contact Ms Hiskey partly because an officer had been signed off on long-term sick leave.
Breaking the news of English's sentence to Ms Hiskey, she said: "He should have got longer. If you think about it, he will do half that and he will be out on the streets again selling drugs, I am cross that he will be able to do that so easily."
Police arrested English, who admitted to supplying a Class A drug, at the scene after paramedics found Steven collapsed at about 5.30pm in Market Road on Monday, October 21.
English was pencilled in to make a plea at the city's crown court last Monday, but the case was fast-tracked to March 18 as the Crown Prosecution Service expected him to plead guilty.
An inquest in March concluded Hiskey died from alcohol and heroin poisoning.
Ms Hiskey, 50, of Squirrels Court, Melbourne, added: "I'm quite cross I wasn't told because I wanted to go to the court and find out his excuses as to why he was out selling drugs. Why he was with Steven that day?"
Despite spending much of his adulthood in and out of the criminal courts for burglary, assault and sexual assault cases, Ms Hiskey said in a Chronicle article in March she was never disappointed in her "loving son".
With his troubled past looming over him, Ms Hiskey says he struggled to find work and was on the streets in the months before his death.
Asked if English's jail term will grant her some much-needed closure, she said through tears: "It will never replace him."
Mr Hiskey's cousin Charlotte, 23, said: "What's also important is not that people should basically see this as a lesson as such but maybe realise the consequences of taking drugs."
Colin Marshall, 31, of St Nazaire Road, Melbourne, who occasionally took Mr Hiskey in, said: "He was a brilliant mate, a man with a great heart, a great sense of humour and is greatly missed."
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said it considered charging English with manslaughter, but could not as he supplied drugs to a "fully informed and responsible adult" who "freely and voluntarily self-administered" them.
An Essex Police spokesman explained Ms Hiskey was not contacted by witness care because English had been charged with supplying drugs as opposed to manslaughter, thus not rendering Mr Hiskey a "victim" on their system.
The spokesman said: "With this case we don't have that legal obligation to but we usually would and should have given her a phone cal.
"But because of reasons explained, including the fact that the officer in the case has been on sick leave long-term, we have failed to do so."
