15 months' jail for one supplier of 'killer drug'.

Byline: By ANDREW HIRST Crime Reporter

A YOUNG Huddersfield man who supplied ecstasy tablets to a teenage raver who collapsed and died has been jailed for 15 months.

Ecstasy-user Scott Brooke admitted passing on 20 of the Class A drug tablets to 19-year-old Andrew Hook who later attended an all-night rave at a club last July.

In the early hours of the morningMr Hook, of Highlands Avenue, Almondbury, collapsed near a club called The Mill at Thornton Road, Bradford.

A post-mortem revealed that he had died of hyperpyrexia caused my the ingestion of the ecstasy ingredient MDMA.

Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday that Brooke was questioned by police investigating the teenager's death and he admitted supplying the Class A drug to Mr Hook.

But prosecutor Judith Naylor pointed out that there was no direct link between the ecstasy supplied by Brooke and the teenager's death, because it was known that Mr Hook had purchased further ecstasy tablets from another source that night.

Brooke, 21, of New Road, Kirkheaton, admitted supplying ecstasy to Mr Hook and other friends and possessing some tablets for his own use.

Jailing him yesterday, Judge Jonathon Durham Hall QC said Mr Hook had died at "an appallingly young age".

"The Crown and the defence are right. His death cannot be attributed to the supply by you, for you were one of several who supplied Mr Hook.

"In terms of a legal, causative link it is impossible to say whether your drug caused his death.

"In terms of culpability, moral, social or otherwise, you are as much to blame as any and every supplier of ecstasy.

"It is a killer drug and it is self-evidently appalling that young people think they can take it without consequence."

Brooke was not charged with the drugs offences until January this year, but following his release on bail police discovered a cannabis-growing operation at the house he shared with his then girlfriend, Natasha Ellis, in the Fartown area of Huddersfield.

Ellis, 18, now of Leymoor Road, Golcar, admitted a charge of allowing the premises to be used for the production of cannabis and was given a 12-month supervision order.

Brooke was given a sentence of nine months in jail for the ecstasy supply offences with a further six months imprisonment for being concerned in the production of cannabis.

The duo said they had been acting in fear of anotherman at the time they were involved with the cannabis plants.

Brooke's lawyer, Michael Greenhalgh, told the court that his client had been devastated by Mr Hook's death and had changed his life around since last year.

He said Brooke was now reunited with his family, had got a job at a supermarket and no longer used drugs or attended raves.

Mr Greenhalgh stressed Brooke's offending was not commercial supplying for profit, but social supply to other friends and associates who pooled their money to purchase ecstasy.