Matthew Hennock gave his evidence on Tuesday in the trial Tracy Lee Dowling, 41, who was charged with Mr Doyle’s manslaughter after prosecutors alleged she failed to get him the medical attention he needed.

Mr Hennock told the court that he, Ms Dowling, and Mr Doyle had each taken two Xanax tablets before going to get Oxycontin from another friend’s house.

The witness said Mr Doyle quickly deteriorated once inside and recalled him being “hunched over on the side of the couch”. 

“When I came out into the lounge room, he had like crust around his lips,” Mr Hennock recalled.

“I walked over and tried to wake him up, started slapping him, saying his name, slapping him harder.” 

Mr Hennock said he then loaded Mr Doyle into Ms Dowling’s red ute with the help of a bystander with the intention of rushing him to the hospital.

“I just wanted to get him to the hospital, I was worried about him because I couldn’t wake him up,” he said.

“I was running back up inside to get his bumbag and his jumper, then I ran back outside to take him to the hospital, but Tracy was gone with him in the ute.”

However, when Mr Hennock went to find them at the hospital, they were not there.

“I thought they were going to hospital, so I went to hospital – that was the whole thing, put him in the car and go to hospital,” he said.

Earlier in the trial, Crown prosecutors alleged Ms Dowling took Mr Doyle back to her home instead of to the hospital, which they say constituted the criminal negligence required to charge her with his manslaughter.

Mr Doyle was found dead at the base of the same red ute early the next morning. 

On Tuesday, a recording of now-deceased Corey Power’s interview with the police from days after the incident explained he was the one who supplied the Xanax suspected of causing Mr Doyle’s death.

Mr Power, who was murdered in 2013 by Owen Fuller, told police he gave Ms Dowling the prescription drugs when she showed up his house the night before Mr Doyle died, saying he owed her money for some Oxycontin. 

“She said ‘give me some of the Xanax’ and then she kept going and going and going and going,” Mr Power said.

“She wanted 10, she wanted 20, then basically I think she was trying to get the whole script off me, and I said ‘no, no, no’, and in the end I just gave her 10 and she said she’d go and sell them.”

During his hour-and-a-half video testimony, Mr Power told police he was not close with Ms Dowling but knew she had a reputation as a “dirty junkie” around town and “had no respect for her own health or anyone else’s”. 

The trial continues.

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