Meeting with a stranger led to teen girl’s overdose death

IT’S any parent’s worst nightmare — your 13-year-old daughter is plied with a deadly drug and doesn’t come home. Here a mother reveals the pain of her loss, and frustration at the justice system.

Alesha Fernando and Luke Delphin.

ALESHA Fernando was just 13 when she was plied with the deadly drug GHB and never regained consciousness.

A meeting hours earlier led to Alesha’s death, when she crossed paths with Luke Delphin, 19, just weeks after a stint in custody.

Katrina Gavan remembers her daughter as a “typical teenager” but laments a life lost.

She questions a justice system that allowed this to happen.

Alesha Fernando and her mother, Katrina Gavan.

“I always looked after her,” she said.

“He took away my whole life.

“It was the first time Alesha had met him (Delphin).

“He knew what he did. She was a child. He was a grown man.”

Delphin has pleaded guilty to supplying a child with illicit drugs and a string of other offences committed over a four-day crime spree.

On the night of June 19 last year, Delphin and mate Liam Cuttriss picked up Alesha and her 15-year-old friend in a stolen car.

In a police summary yet to be agreed upon by the prosecution and the defence, Delphin then drove the group to a house in Narre Warren where he bought 20 millilitres of GHB for $50.

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They then returned to Delphin’s Dandenong unit, where he supplied the group with cannabis.

“At some point Delphin took a plunger to draw up amounts of the GHB substance and passed it around,’’ the summary before the court states.

“Delphin passed the plunger to both females and Cuttriss.

“During the night Delphin has continued to ask Alesha if she wants more of the GHB substance.’’

It is believed she took repeated doses of GHB during the night, administering the deadly substance from the shared plunger into her mouth.

Alesha ingested more GHB than her body could handle and by 4am, fell asleep on an inflatable mattress.

About 6am a friend, Alyssa, who had been watching from afar on social media, became worried and went to the house.

She found Alesha lying unresponsive under Delphin’s arm and leg, lying on her face, her lips a blue-purple.

“Delphin told the friend to leave her and that she was fine,’’ the summary states.

Alyssa called 000 and ambulance officers instructed Cuttriss to perform CPR until they arrived.

Police were told Delphin hid in a bedroom.

He is also alleged to have said that he had seen “so many people die from drugs’’ before he fled.

Ms Gavan made a frantic dash to the Dandenong unit after being alerted her daughter was in trouble.

“I jumped in the car,” she said.

“It was peak hour. I was trying to get the address and I heard sirens in the distance and saw ambulances and I knew where to go.

“She was cold by the time I got to her.

“There’s no way he didn’t know.”

Alesha was taken to the Monash Medical Centre in Clayton and placed on life support.

But nothing could be done to save her.

Police arrested Delphin hiding in a cupboard in a Frankston home.

Ms Gavan made the brave decision to donate her daughter’s organs, convinced Alesha could do something for others.

“She was my little girl. My only child,’’ Ms Gavan said.

“I’ve had letters from both of the people who received her kidneys. A woman received her lungs.

“She saved three lives.’’

Donating her organs was also a way to spend more time with her daughter.

“I wanted time with my baby. Everyone says it was selfless but I didn’t want to give her up,’’ Ms Gavan said.

She will remember her daughter as fun loving and with a big heart.

As Alesha’s organs were being donated, police tracked Delphin down to a Frankston unit on June 22 where he and Cuttriss were found hiding in a cupboard.

He refused to obey police and came out “punching and thrashing’’, hitting a detective and fracturing his eye and spitting at an officer before being found with ice on him.

Delphin denied supplying Alesha with drugs and claimed he did not know how much drugs she consumed.

“I dunno, I dunno. I’m not their parent, I wasn’t sitting there looking after them.’’

He will face the County Court this year.

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‘He took my best friend, my soulmate,’ mum says

KATRINA Gavan’s phone rang just after 6am. Alyssa, a friend of Ms Gavan’s daughter Alesha, was in a panic. She had found Alesha face down in a Dandenong unit. Her lips were blue, her body lifeless.

Overnight, Alesha had posted photos on Snapchat depicting partying and the use of GHB, a heavy duty drug that causes vomiting, unconsciousness and death in overdoses.

The uploads had suddenly stopped, which was why Alyssa had rushed to the unit, where she found her 13-year-old friend with a 19-year-old draped across her.

They were tangled, a grown man and a suffocating child, on an inflatable mattress. Alesha was, in the language of the police report, “unresponsive and unconscious”.

Alesha was a typical teenager.

Mother and only child were close, though Katrina had grown increasingly concerned. Alesha was a “typical teenager”, but she had been skipping school and fallen in with wayward types.

Alesha had been home when Ms Gavan went to bed the night before. Cooking sausages with a friend. They must have sneaked out.

Now Alesha was receiving CPR. Ms Gavan rushed to be with her daughter.

It was pre-peak hour on a Tuesday morning. The world was waking to a new winter’s day. Ms Gavan, who worked two jobs, was frantic, desperate and stuck in traffic.

She didn’t have the address. When she heard the sirens in the distance, she aimed her car at their wailing.

She arrived after the ambulance officers. “When I got there the emergency workers would not let me in,” she said. “They brought her down some stairs in a wrap.”

Ms Gavan could not see the patient’s face. She hoped it was not her daughter. She spotted an exposed hand. “I saw her pink nails and she had had them done the night before,” she says. “I knew it was her.”

She sat at her daughter’s bedside at Monash Medical Centre all day on June 20 last year. Her mind was made up. She would nurse her daughter through whatever lay ahead.

If it meant a wheelchair for life, so be it. She just wanted her home. The next day, however, doctors confirmed that Alesha was brain dead.

Alesha’s organs were donated.

Taking her home was not an option. Life support would have to be switched off.

It was Ms Gavan’s birthday. She made a choice that would give her another day to farewell her daughter, but also a chance to give Alesha a legacy. She chose to donate Alesha’s organs.

“I wanted more time with my baby,” she said. “Everyone says it was selfless but I didn’t want to give her up.”

The decision would save three lives. It seemed a fitting gift for a little girl whose motto was “power to believe, power to overcome, power to hope”.

Luke Delphin, the 19-year-old on the inflatable mattress, pleaded guilty to supplying drugs to minors.

Ms Gavan is outraged that Delphin, a stranger to her daughter until the night he gave her GHB, has not been charged with manslaughter.

“In this day and age, he is not getting what he should be getting,” she says. “He gave her a date-rape drug.”

Alesha’s mum says “He gave her a date-rape drug.”

He and a friend, Liam Cuttriss, picked up Alesha and another girl, 15, in a stolen car on the night of June 19 last year. Delphin and Cuttriss, police say, had been involved in a burglary and stole the Mazda from Berwick the night before.

The group went to Delphin’s assisted housing unit.

They smoked cannabis and Delphin smoked methamphetamine. Delphin used a plunger to draw GHB, which the group shared repeatedly. About 4am, Alesha and Delphin are thought to have passed out on the mattress.

When the alert was raised about Alesha’s perilous state, Delphin hid in a bedroom, according to police, and told Cuttriss: “You gotta stop bringing people around here. I can’t lose my place over this s---. It isn’t worth it.”

He also said, police say, that he had seen “so many people die from drugs”.

Police arrested him on the same day that doctors switched off Alesha’s life support. He was hiding in a cupboard in a Frankston home.

When police asked him to come out, he punched and thrashed and spat at them. One of them received a broken hand.

During his police interview Delphin was asked how much GHB everybody consumed on the night Alesha fell ill.

“I dunno, I dunno, I’m not their parent,” he said.

“I wasn’t sitting there looking after them.”

Asked if he could explain what happened when he was woken and told someone had overdosed, Delphin said: “Nuh, I don’t know who, really, ’cause I was out of there.”

Ms Gavan is now studying youth work. And lamenting how the world ought to be.

“He took my best friend away,” she said.

“I always looked after her. I lost my soulmate.”

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