A woman whose desperate drug habit led her to con people for cash has died.<\/p>\n
For many years Amanda Louise Futcher battled addiction but relapsed, causing her to take advantage of the kindness of strangers to stave off withdrawals.<\/p>\n
Amanda Futcher<\/p>\n
But her family remembers a \u201ckind, loving, funny\u201d girl who genuinely regretted the path her life had taken.<\/p>\n
An inquest into Ms Futcher\u2019s death, held at Reading Town Hall on Monday, May 11, heard her system finally succumbed to addiction to opiates and cocaine use.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old had even discharged herself from hospital as her kidneys and heart failed, the hearing was told.<\/p>\n
The Newbury Weekly News and Newburytoday have documented her criminality over the years.<\/p>\n
But her family has said they will remember her differently.<\/p>\n
Despite her actions as she sank deeper into addiction, her father Stephen said after the hearing: \u201cWe know she did wrong but, in the end, she paid her debt to society.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter getting involved with drugs she was in the grip of a terrible addiction\u2026 but when we were together as a family she was always kind and funny.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had her problems but she could also be kind to people.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is at peace now and the best memories I have of Amanda will remain that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The inquest was told of a years-long struggle with substance abuse but that, ironically, Ms Futcher, who lived in the Newbury area for many years, had begun to turn a corner.<\/p>\n
There had been no recent overdoses and a belated willingness to engage with the help offered.<\/p>\n
But, tragically, it was too late.<\/p>\n
Last summer she was admitted to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading suffering from multiple conditions, including heart disease, kidney failure and other illnesses related to intravenous drug abuse.<\/p>\n
Even then, the inquest heard, she discharged herself against the advice of doctors.<\/p>\n
Ms Futcher was back in custody when she was discovered to be in a desperate condition and rushed back to hospital.<\/p>\n
She was found to be suffering from ischemic heart disease, deep vein thrombosis and other conditions.<\/p>\n
But a post mortem examination found she had died, at 8.32am last June 6, from a stroke.<\/p>\n
Tests showed traces of fairly recent cocaine use, prescription medication and methadone \u2013 an opioid prescribed as a heroin substitute and addiction treatment.<\/p>\n
Assistant Berkshire coroner Justine Spencer noted that Ms Futcher had demonstrated \u201cimproved contact\u201d with health authorities in her final year, despite having discharged herself from hospital against medical advice.<\/p>\n
She said the principal cause of death was a stroke accompanied by end stage kidney failure and heart disease as a consequence of intravenous illegal drug use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman whose desperate drug habit led her to con people for cash has died. For many years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[11],"tags":[105,1020,8728,16,15,5900],"class_list":["post-954466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-inquests","tag-newbury","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-update-me"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116560830701439523","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}