NEWS REPORT: An investigation is underway
following the death of a man at the Kendal Calling music festival.
That was the day life as I knew it stopped.
CID walked through the door.
They wanted to speak to me about what had happened.
Was it really a conspiracy?
You know, I was just out to have some fun with a few friends.
I think everyone was kind of panicked
because it was a shock to us all cos that had happened
and we couldn't get in contact with anyone.
Everyone's being taken into hospital.
I thought that they'll be OK.
I thought, "They're in good hands," you know.
I was very - wrongly - optimistic about it.
I arrived at work about... just before eight o'clock
on the morning of Christian's death.
One of my colleagues says to me,
"There's been a death at Kendal Calling."
We headed straight down to the festival.
It's a very, very confused scene.
You have a real time pressure situation
and our priority's just trying to save lives.
Who at that festival is selling that same batch of drugs?
The police came over.
I heard them talking, like, amongst themselves
and they were kind of like,
"If only we knew where the pills came from",
and something clicked.
I didn't even think about it at that point.
I just kind of went, "Oh, I know where they're from."
I had remembered that I had met a guy there the year before,
we must have transferred numbers and he'd texted me
exactly a year down the line.
We didn't really think there was anything to be nervous about
so everyone was perky about going to get their drugs or the ecstasy.
We'd all given Simon a bit of money to get, like...
I think it was maybe like a fiver or something for a pill.
I had about £40-60 that was given from the whip-round
from all of my friends.
He said, "I'm going to go and meet this person
"and I'm going to go and get some pills,"
and I was like, "Oh, OK," and he said,
"I'll take your phone with me."
I said, "I'll come along with you, then, cos you've got my phone."
So we'd gone to meet Luke outside of his tent.
It was a big blue tent.
Simon knew him from previous festivals
cos he'd been quite a lot, so he already knew this person.
I didn't think anything of it at all.
And then he invited me in.
Obviously, he knew what I was there for.
He still recognised me from the year before.
We had a little bit of a talk, like,
"How are things with you?", and whatnot.
He handed me between 10 and 15 tablets.
That was it and the deal was done and I took them back
to all my friends and passed them out to who they belonged to, yeah.
I think me and Chris had took two each cos we'd given a tenner
and everyone else had taken one.
And we'd taken them and we were just hoping that we'd have a good night.
Rumour is going around, but no concrete information
about what's happened and what substances to avoid.
We need to stop them.
We can't have people being ill from the same batch.
The police came over. I was still in my onesie and my socks.
I didn't have any wellies on.
It was wet, it was cold, it was raining.
It was horrible and I just kind of stormed through the tents
and I said, "It's over here."
I stood and watched them go into this tent
and pull everything out of it and it was just kind of extreme,
the amount of drugs this guy had on him.
And I was like, "Wow!"
I was in sheer panic.
I was like, "Oh, my God, I've got so many people into trouble.
"Everyone's going to hate me. What if Simon gets into trouble?"
We were halfway to the hospital
and the police phoned us to say that
they'd got him at the police station in Carlisle
and that we had to go there.
He asked me to go in the toilet with him
and he just broke down.
And he said, "I don't know what's happening."
When we brought Simon in, there was no doubting
that we were saying to him that he was considered a suspect
in the supplying of the drugs.
He'd provided a lot of information, he talked freely.
I haven't really been in any trouble with the police before,
but I think they're always quite intimidating characters.
But I don't think he was trying to, sort of, be unhelpful.
Maybe a little bit evasive
or a little bit lacking in terms of certain details
he didn't want to maybe fully even admit to himself at that point.
They were trying to work out, obviously, if I was a drug dealer.
The way I look at it is, basically, I was the middleman, unfortunately.
I was the middleman in all this.
There was no master plan in getting rid of all these drugs
at this festival.
I was just out with my friends
and we all wanted to enjoy ourselves and have a good time.
There's weeks and weeks of work to do
as a team of detectives on that case.
You've got a lot more inquiries to do
in terms of the telephone data to analyse,
drugs to send off for analysis.
We're quite happy Simon's clearly involved in the supply of drugs
that have led to Christian's death.
It was at that point where I thought, "Right, gosh."
I'm taking all this in now and it's like,
"There's going to be some serious consequences here."