As Skye Turner’s heroin addiction tightened its grip on her, she turned to her mother and told her she “was worthless and that she may as well die”.
Those would be the heartbreaking final words Marie Turner heard from her daughter.
Days later on March 10, 36-year-old Skye was found dead in a van on Melbourne’s Elizabeth St hours after injecting a fatal dose of heroin; something her family insists would not have happened had she had access to safe injecting rooms.
Skye's sister is Channel 9 journalist Laura Turner, and she yesterday made the brave decision to cover her own sibling's death to make a heartfelt plea.
"People are dying at the highest rates since the 90s of heroin overdoses... things are not working," she told Neil Mitchell on 3AW.
"People like Skye are the forgotten ones. They’re judged. They’re people, real people."
To her family, Skye was a "beautiful and intelligent" daughter and mother-of-two, and the idol of her only sister.
"She was my sister, she was a state champion sprinter in her prime, and now she’s dead," Laura said.
Skye's addiction was especially hard for her mother, who watched her daughter struggle to cope.
Marie said she had pleaded with Maroondah Hospital to keep her daughter in a psychiatric ward, mere days before she died. Skye was instead discharged into the care of another heroin addict.
"She said to me, ‘Mum I don't want to be like this anymore’," her mother, Marie told A Current Affair. "She told me ... that she was worthless and that she may as well die."
“I said, ‘My daughter has threatened her own life. She has told me that she wants to die, that her life is not worth living, she has told me this today because I had been in the room with her'.
“And what did they say? ‘They all say that’.
“My daughter is not ‘they all’. My daughter is a precious individual.”
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Since the opening of Australia's first safe injection room in Sydney's Kings Cross in 2001, not a single person has overdosed at the facility and ambulance call-outs to the area have dropped by 80 per cent.
Currently, support to establish a safe injecting facility in Richmond is growing, with the Victorian Government set to consider legislation that would prevent the loss of lives like Skye's.
"For a long time I've felt a real burning desire to change things," Laura said of her unwavering support of safe injection rooms.
"When my sister died, I had this anger inside of me... a real passion to help people who suffer the way she did."
If you or someone you know is struggling with drug addiction, please seek help from your GP, or call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or SANE on 1800 18 7263. For more resources, see the Alcohol and Drug Foundation website.
Do you support the funding of safe injecting rooms?
Top Comments
I tend to agree with Evie. This article blames everyone but the user. Illegal addiction begins with a choice by the user to take an illegal substance. I appreciate the families grief at losing their family member, what a horrible ordeal they have been through. I don't think Skye is anymore special than any other drug addict though - they are all someone's child, someone's sister/brother, etc. But the money that is already thrown at illegal drug use frustrates me. I'd rather see it funnelled into childhood illnesses, cancer research, etc. And what of the impact on innocent people - the hospital staff, ambulance and police, passersby (ie what Evie is getting at)? And lastly, what about those two little kids - the horrors they must have seen with a mother who was addicted to drugs... Instead of blaming the system for Skye's death, I think unfortunately this family needs to accept that Skye was ultimately her own worst enemy.
100% agree!
I hope for your sake you live a perfect life where you have not made a bad choice. Drug addicts are people who yes made bad choices at the start but most would give anything to not be leading this life and they shouldn't have to give their life for bad choices. By the sound of it Skye was desperate to get the help she needed but it wasn't there. Why should she have had to die bc she made a sh1t house choice years ago.
Of course we all make mistakes! Most of the time there are consequences...
A list of the private and taxpayer funded assistance given and/or offered to Skye throughout her addiction might show that she was indeed offered assistance through a number of avenues? It would be helpful to see that side also. I feel it has been omitted from this particular story.
My biggest concern with safe rooms is that it might reduce the number of overdoses but does it reduce the number of new users? By providing a place to take illegal drugs without potential consequences - does that prevent young people from starting the cycle? These rooms cost millions of dollars a year - are they providing a long term solution?
The money that is thrown at illegal drug use goes to the wrong place. The key word here is illegal. The money is spent on law enforcement, not the health matters surrounding drug addiction. It's not as simple as choice, either. Most drug users are people who have trauma in their past and/or are mentally ill and not getting the right help. Your opinion is naive.
I live in Richmond. I get harassed by people who are clearly high every time I walk home along Victoria St (at 6-7pm). It is scary. They can be aggressive and unpredictable. I do not support any measure that would result in more high individuals. It seems to me that this is what would happen, by having injecting rooms.
To all the people who are advocating for injecting rooms, how about we put them nextdoor to your house?
but that is the point of injecting rooms, they are safe houses for people who are suffering from an addition to inject and be safe so you wouldn't have the people injecting on the street as you walk past or harassing you etc whilst high. I would have thought that would be a positive for someone like yourself who is clearly seeing the impacts of drug use around you. Pushing it away and stating not in my neighborhood is doing no one any favors. Drugs aren't going anywhere any time soon so how about a proactive approach instead of not in my neighborhood approach
If this is how you feel, you should be petitioning the government to make drugs a health problem, rather than a criminal justice one.