A teenage girl lies in a coma. Her baby is dead. This heartbreaking picture shows how heroin destroyed one Sussex family's world.

Amy Pickard, 17, has been in a critical condition in hospital for 11 weeks since she was found slumped in a public toilet.

The teenager was ten weeks pregnant when she went out with a male friend to buy a cot and then have a few drinks.

The pair were later found collapsed in a locked cubicle at toilets in Hastings town centre.

Firefighters had to force open the door. Amy was resuscitated by paramedics. But she has never regained consciousness and now receives round-the-clock treatment at the Conquest Hospital, Hastings.

Her mother, Thelma Pickard, 47, visits her daughter daily to see her lying comatose.

The baby Amy was carrying, named Summer Louise, has died. Amy is fighting for her own life in a high dependency unit. She shows signs of brain damage from which she may never fully recover.

Mrs Pickard said: "I tell Amy everything, but whether she is able to absorb what I'm telling her I don't know.

"It's horrendous. She was my daughter, my best friend, everything. How could anyone do this to her? She was such a lovely, bubbly girl with so much to live for.

"She was so looking forward to spending time with her daughter and then this happens. You always think it will never happen to you but in this case it has. It is horrible."

Mrs Pickard, of Sandown Road, Hastings, has been visiting the hospital with her son David, 21, who has found it difficult to come to terms with his sister's condition.

But she added: "The doctors and nurses at the Conquest have been brilliant." Mrs Pickard, herself an auxillary nurse, said heroin had become a menace on the streets of Hastings and St Leonards.

The town, blighted by high unemployment and 27th in the UK's deprivation index, has a drug problem on a par with some inner city areas.

Mrs Pickard said: "Heroin is a deadly drug. Anyone who looks at the picture of my daughter will be able to see that.

"She was so lively and used to do a lot of running. But now she weighs just six and a half stone.

"She never used drugs in her life. In fact she abhorred its use when I spoke to her. But it's a definite problem in Hastings. It's almost on every street corner now. It's hard to realise what damage it can do.

"For God's sake just say no. It's not worth it."

Amy is being fed through a tube but her condition is being hampered by a chest infection.

Her relatives have been flooded with goodwill messages and cards.

A bank account has been set up for anyone wanting make a donation to the Pickards. Cash can be donated to Friends of Thelma and Amy at Lloyds TSB, sort code 30-97-66, account number 01708953.

Three men have been quizzed by police and bailed to return at a later date.