A NURSE accused of being responsible for a fatal road crash told a jury she started to take powerful painkiller tramadol after she suffered a miscarriage.

Cerys Price denies causing the death of 65-year-old Robert Dean in a head-on crash in a “seriously drugged-up state” whilst she was using the opiate.

Timothy Evans, prosecuting, claimed she became hooked on the “dangerous drug” after she self-medicated but the graduate nurse denied this.

Price said: “I was taking it safely, I never abused it. I wasn’t reliant on them. I wasn’t dependent on them.”

The 28-year-old, from Nantyglo, told Cardiff Crown Court she was suffering with gynaecological problems in 2016: “A month after my miscarriage, the pain was continuous and it was getting worse.”

She said she went on holiday to Mexico in the June of that year, a month before the crash, and bought tramadol over the counter from a chemist.

Price told how she was in pain during the second week of her stay in the country and needed medication: “I needed something. I had foolishly forgotten my painkillers at home.”

She told the court she usually took ibuprofen, paracetamol and co-codamol and had been prescribed an anti-depressant called citalopram.

Tramadol was available in Mexico without prescription and she said it had worked for her when she took it in the past and she bought a tub which she took back to the UK in her suitcase.

She told her barrister John Dye: “Tramadol helped me a lot.”

Mr Evans, in cross-examination, said to Price: “I am going to put it bluntly to you that you became, sadly as people do, dependent on this synthetic opiate.”

The defendant denies this.

The prosecutor put it to Price: “It’s like heroin and morphine. It’s a dangerous drug.”

She answered that she didn’t know about heroin and morphine but admitted it had been “foolish” to self-medicate on tramadol.

Price, of Limestone Road East, denies causing the death by dangerous driving of Mr Dean, from Cwmcarn, on July 15, 2016.

The alleged victim died on the A467 between Rogerstone and the Bassaleg roundabout after his Vauxhall Astra collided with the Isuzu pick-up she was driving.

Price also denies causing serious injury to her then boyfriend, Jack Tinklin, by dangerous driving.

He was a front seat passenger in the Isuzu at the time of the crash.

The trial, before Judge Michael Fitton QC, continues.