Mum warns young people of drink dangers

Nov 7 2010 by Alastair Craig, Sunday Sun

WITH another drunk reveller dead, heartbroken Jane Hales has revealed the alcohol tragedy which tore her family apart as a warning to others.

Like thousands of parents, Jane watched as her child left home for university full of hopes for the future.

But the dreams ended in despair, and now she has opened her heart to tell how a single night of binge-drinking left her beloved son Simon severely brain damaged.

Jane has decided to reveal her family’s tragic story to warn other young people of the dangers of excess alcohol.

The heart-felt plea comes just days after alcohol took the life of Daniel Sweeney, who on Tuesday plunged to his death from the wall of a car park at Newcastle Central Station.

CCTV footage showed the 20-year-old, from County Mayo in Ireland, apparently drunk and staggering in the early hours of the morning before disappearing over a ledge.

The death came just as a hard-hitting report by a former drugs adviser was published, claiming booze wrecks more lives than heroin and crack cocaine.

Jane’s son Simon, 21, a Newcastle University student, was an ordinary, fun-loving teenager when a booze-fuelled night destroyed the social life he so enjoyed.

He was on a Students’ Union night out when he fell off a 20ft wall he was trying to climb near the city’s Legends nightclub.

He was in a coma for five weeks after the accident, in October last year, then spent two months in a head injury unit, but doctors couldn’t prevent him suffering brain damage from which he will never recover.