lil angel15
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'Drug dealing `rife' at hostel
May 16, 2007 02:15am
DRUG dealing was rife at a State Government mental health hostel where a dead teenager was not discovered for three days, an inquest has heard.
State Coroner Mark Johns is investigating how Thomas Keough died from a methadone overdose at Palm Lodge, College Park, when he was not prescribed with the drug.
Mr Keough, 18, is believed to have died on Friday, August 9, 2003. However, a Palm Lodge staff member did not find his body in his room until the evening of Monday, August 11, 2003.
Mr Johns yesterday heard the hostel, operated by the Central Northern Adelaide Health Service, was under-staffed when Mr Keough died, with only one nurse on duty during the day and another at night. He also was told staff did not enter the rooms of its 20-odd residents, keep written records of their movements or perform searches for illicit drugs or alcohol when they returned from day trips or weekends.
This was despite drug dealers being frequently among those granted permission to stay at Palm Lodge, with staff regularly observing suspicious behaviour inside or outside the property.
A former resident provided a sworn statement to police saying he often saw residents who had consumed illicit drugs "walking around in a zombie-like state".
"It's a place where people take a lot of drugs," he said.
A former Palm Lodge nurse, Naomi Jolley, said a known drug dealer and "huge user" was a resident when Mr Keough died but had not been evicted because he was not caught dealing drugs.
Under questioning from lawyer and independent MP Nick Xenophon, acting for Mr Keough's father Mark, Ms Jolley said the drug dealing prompted the installation of a security gate.
The gate, however, was not electronically monitored because management made a decision "not to spend the extra $900" to enable the tracing of swipe cards used to enter the property, she said. Instead, staff relied on visual sightings to determine who was at Palm Lodge at any one time, with no checks of their rooms conducted during the day.
"It was up to them to tell us when they were leaving, either for the day or the weekend," said Ms Jolley. "If they were not seen, they were presumed to be on leave. If they were seen, they were ticked as being there."
Another nurse, David Barrington, said he personally always checked on residents each night to see if they were in their rooms but this was not official policy.
The inquest continues.
Adelaide Advertiser