A jury has heard how a drug addict's boyfriend told a nurse he had injected her with heroin shortly before she collapsed at their Keighley home.

Tracey Bradley, 28, was certified dead at the Airedale General Hospital in March last year after she was admitted there suffering from the effects of a heroin overdose.

Miss Bradley's boyfriend Jason Caswell, who has denied manslaughter, was being comforted by staff nurse Lois Bannister following Miss Bradley's admission to hospital.

She described how Caswell, 29, was distressed and crying when they went into the relatives' room, but then began asking about the effect of aspirin on people with allergies to it.

Miss Bannister said: "I asked him why she had been given aspirin. He said: 'I just wanted to shut her up because she was very moody - because she didn't want to take any heroin because she wanted her child back.'

"He said to me 'Oh, what have I done? Is she dead?'''

Miss Bannister said Caswell said he had gone out and bought a wrap which he mixed with aspirin and plenty of water.

''He injected himself first and then injected Tracey. At that point he put his arm out,'' alleged Miss Bannister.

Miss Bannister said after the doctor informed Caswell about his girlfriend's death he just kept asking: 'What have I done?'

Under cross-examination by Caswell's barrister, Alastair Edie, Miss Bannister confirmed the defendant told her that both he and Miss Bradley had taken some heroin earlier in the day.

Mr Edie put it to the nurse that a post mortem later revealed there was no trace of aspirin in Miss Bradley's body and that for some obscure reason his client must have been telling her something he knew to be untrue.

''If it wasn't mixed with aspirin I don't know why he told me it was,'' she replied.

Miss Bannister conceded it had been a harrowing experience, but maintained her recollections were very clear.

The court also heard evidence about a visit the couple made earlier that day to a drug and alcohol unit in Keighley where Miss Bradley told a worker she felt partly responsible for the death of Christopher Wilson, who died from a mix of heroin and alcohol. Miss Bradley admitted injecting Mr Wilson with heroin, although Caswell described him as 'an overdose risk' and refused to inject him.

Caswell, now of Hainworth Wood Road, Woodhouse, has also denied a further allegation relating to Miss Bradley's death that he administered a noxious substance so as to endanger life.

The trial continues.