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by Donald McRae December 2016
Three years ago Luvo Manyonga was a crystal meth addict. Now he is an Olympic silver medallist. This is his journey from the tik-addled townships to Rio glory, with the help of an Irish former street-sweeper turned strongman. Luvo Manyonga has already created my favourite story of the year but, on a gentle summer afternoon in Pretoria, the South African long jumper is just getting started. At the Rio Olympics in August, Manyonga conjured up a dizzying leap when he transformed the desperate grind of poverty and drug addiction into a beautifully shiny silver medal and soothing redemption. It proved he had overcome the bleak hold that crystal meth once exerted over his township life.
“…I worked with him in the gym and wherever I went, Luvo went. It was a slow process – with lots of relapses...”Manyonga kept sliding back into the dark clutches of addiction and McGrath, three years later, sighs. “You had to have the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job to work with Luvo then. You never knew from one day to the next where he would be. But you had to make peace with that and believe things would get better.”
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The murder charge against Harriet Wran, daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran, has been dropped.
July 6th 2016
“I FEEL terrible. I’m ashamed to be involved in anything like that.”
Harriet Wran has spoken for the first time about her role in the murder of small-time ice dealer Daniel McNulty, in August 2014, as well as her drug addictions which started with prescription drugs and then led to ice.
Wran, 28, has been called by her barrister Phillip Boulton SC to give evidence at her sentencing hearing at NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.
The daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran was one of three people charged with murdering Mr McNulty during a break-in at the dealer’s Redfern unit.
With her voice trembling, she spoke about the night Mr McNulty, 48, was stabbed to death when she and her then boyfriend Michael Lee and Lloyd Haines went looking for ice.
Mr Boulton asked her how she felt to “be engaged in criminal activity that ultimately led to the death of a man and serious injury of another?”
She has pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact of murder and robbery in company.
“I can’t believe someone died and someone was so badly injured.”
She said “no one should lose their life” in those circumstances.
“I regret every step I took that night.”
She told the court she was using ice regularly at the time of the fatal stabbing — something she said she never thought she would do.
She had abused Ritalin, ecstasy and cocaine but never wanted to touch ice.
Harriet’s mother Jill Hickson Wran arrives to hear her daughter’s sentencing hearing at the Supreme Court in Sydney. Picture: John GraingerSource:News Corp Australia
“I was never gonna do ice, it was in another league … I associated it with billboards of people with their faces rotting away. That’s how I felt about it.”
That changed when she was in rehab for bulimia and she met an ice addict. They checked out of the facility and they went for beers. And then handed her an ice pipe.
There was no turning back.
“I never felt like I did when I was using ice. I felt so different, more confident … There was a chemical high I didn’t know existed and I knew my brain was never going to forget that.”
Her face red, and with her mother Jill Hickson Wran watching from the public gallery, Wran said she knew what she was doing was seriously wrong.
“Once the craving starts you can’t stop it.”
She told of the anguish she felt even as she went to get her fix to stop the “cravings”.
“I cried all the way around to the dealer’s place.”
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