'I gave him another chance when he came out of jail'

Emma-Louise grew up in Blackpool, where she was a DJ for 12 years from the age of 16.

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She said she “fell in with the wrong crowd”: “I would often drink a lot and take party drugs. Performing in clubs as a DJ was great but my lifestyle wasn’t and I was suffering.”

She lived this lifestyle for a decade until in 2017 when her dad, Nicholas, died aged 55 in the same year she gave birth to her daughter and Emma-Louise she decided she needed a change.

She then searched for a new home and moved to Chorley in 2019.

Emma-Louise said: “I wanted to make a change to how I was living, but I couldn’t until I moved out of the area. I was glad I made the decision to move.”

After meeting Thomas at the recovery hub, Emma-Louise said it initially seemed he had appeared to have turned his life around, though it transpired he was secretly using drugs.

He also kept returning to his ex-partner in Rawtenstall.

In that time unbeknown to Emma-Louise he was also part of a gang which flooded Accrington and Rossendale with class-A drugs.

She said: “In May 2022, I went on holiday and he sent me a voice note just before I got on the plane to come home, saying the heroin had taken over, so he was going back to Rawtenstall to live with her.

“I didn’t know what he meant by taking over, I assumed he meant using and not being in a drug gang.