Support for 'mercy killer'

A MAN who admitted helping his cancer-stricken mother to die has received "dozens" of calls from people who claim to have carried out mercy killings on their own relatives.

Derek Rowbottom, who was due to be interviewed by police last night, said the calls included two from a man and woman who are prepared to confess publicly if he is charged.

Mr Rowbottom, 44, helped his mother, Alice, 80, to die last Wednesday by pressing a diamorphine booster on a pump at her bedside. She had been in Manchester General Hospital suffering from liver cancer and was in extreme pain.

Unable to bear her suffering, Mr Rowbottom said he noticed the booster button on the pump and decided to administer an overdose. "I pressed it until the syringe was empty. Then I said to one of the nurses, 'There's something wrong with this pump,' and they gave her another one and I did the same again."

Since his admission, made after a nurse saw him giving the second morphine dose, he says he has been inundated with calls of support.

"I seem to have opened something of a Pandora's box," he said. "I have had literally dozens of calls from people who say they have done the same thing.

"One man said he gave his grandfather an overdose of pills in 1968 because he was in a terminal condition and in pain. And a young woman said she and her three brothers did the same as I did with their mother. She was being treated for cancer but was in agony. They pressed the diamorphine booster and allowed her to die with dignity."