A FATHER-of-three was “not going to survive” the moment he injected a huge dose of heroin, an inquest heard.

Brad Kershaw was found slumped on a sofa in Winterbourne Close in Bicester on May 24, after a night with friends in which he also smoked crack cocaine and drank heavily.

Irene Weldrake told Oxfordshire Coroner’s Court the 28-year-old butcher, of Aldbourne Close, had come to her house with a friend at 11pm on May 23, and had brought crack and a bottle of Barcadi rum.

Miss Weldrake said she and Mr Kershaw had smoked the drug using a crack pipe and that everyone was “very drunk”.

She said Mr Kershaw’s friend left the house at about 2am after “becoming rowdy”, and the remaining three people, including her boyfriend Tim Santos, went to sleep.

When she woke at 7.45am, she found Mr Kershaw on the sofa in the living room with blue lips.

Bank statements read to the inquest showed Mr Kershaw had withdrawn £101.50 at 10.50pm the previous night and £30 from Tesco in Pingle Drive at 2.20am.

Family members told the coroner his wallet was empty when he was found dead.

Det Sgt Richard White, of Thames Valley Police, told the inquest: “Regrettably, in my experience, it is relatively easy to purchase drugs at any time of day – on any day.”

Pathologist Dr Elizabeth Soilleux said Mr Kershaw had ketamine, opiates and cocaine in his blood and would have died “within minutes or an hour” of taking the heroin, which she surmised “must have been injected” due to the amount in his system.

The inquest heard a litre of his blood contained 147 micrograms of free morphine – a result of taking the Class A drug.

Taking 120 micrograms, or more, is almost always fatal, she added.

Dr Soilleux said she could find no needle marks on his body, but said they could easily heal, and there was no evidence of regular drug injection.

She added: “I don’t think anything would have saved him.

“As soon as that injection went in, he was not going to survive that amount of heroin. Whatever anyone could have done would not have made a difference.

“We see a lot of this – from people who are novices to hardened users.

“Nobody knows what dose they are taking most of the time.”

Recording a verdict of accidental death, coroner Nicholas Gardiner said on Tuesday: “The path of people who get addicted to drugs is often a fairly short one.”