Humberston Fitties: Man cleared of killing date by spiking vape fluid

A man who was accused of spiking his date's vape fluid with a lethal dose of a powerful painkiller has been cleared of manslaughter.

Christopher Downes, 53, had been charged with killing Kim Harrop, 55, with the drug oxycodone when she spent the night at his cabin near Grimsby.

Ms Harrop, from Grantham, was found dead in Mr Downes' bed in April 2018.

On Friday, a Sheffield Crown Court jury unanimously found Mr Downes, now of Hatfield, near Doncaster, not guilty.

Prosecutors had alleged Mr Downes slipped the oxycodone, a powerful morphine-based painkiller, into Ms Harrop's vape fluid or wine during a date at his cabin in Humberston Fitties and suggested he was sexually motivated.

They accused the defendant of "stockpiling" the drug, which been prescribed to his former partner before she died of cancer.

But the defendant told the trial that Ms Harrop, a mother of four, "must have taken it herself" for back pain she had complained about as they spent the day together on 21 April 2018.

Mr Downes said he had kept the drug due to an "oversight" as he "could not bear to throw away" his former partner's possessions when she died.

The jury found Mr Downes, of St George's Avenue in Hatfield, not guilty of manslaughter after about five hours of deliberations.

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