Father blames P for his fleeing son's drowning

Pat Norris says the Waikato River might have claimed his son, but it was the drug methamphetamine, or P, that took his life.

Dean Norris, 18, leapt into the river on Monday as he was being chased by police after they found him burgling a home in Fitzroy.

Family and friends continued their grim search for his body in the river today.

Mr Norris said his son was high on P when he jumped into the river about 9.40am. He clung to a rock for several minutes before he was swept away.

Today, Mr Norris said he held little hope for his son, who started smoking marijuana when he was 14 and graduated to magic mushrooms and P before becoming a serial P user in the last year.

He said Dean stole, burgled houses and did jobs for gangs to feed his expensive habit. Last week he said he needed to steal more than $5000 to pay for a seven-day supply of P just for himself.

The drug had "taken his soul" and made him a different boy to the one who six years ago was considered one of the country's top young motocross riders.

On Sunday night Dean rang his father for the first time in months and for more than 90 minutes talked about his wasted life.

He told him how gangs cased burglary prospects around the Waikato. He would go in, take property and get P as payment.

"His life was a paranoid one," said Mr Norris. "He was not the kid we knew."

Mr Norris and his ex-wife Janet Bosenius split when Dean was five, but he had seemed to cope well during his primary school years by getting involved in sport.

But when he started secondary school at St John's College in Hillcrest, Dean's life took a downward turn. He was stood down in Year 9 for bringing alcohol to school and transferred to Melville High School, where he was again stood down for having marijuana. He continued to dabble in drugs and ended up in trouble with the law.

Mr Norris and his ex-wife begged authorities to help but they had no systems in place to cope with underage P users.

Once Dean was locked up in the Tauranga police cells for 10 days because there was nowhere else to put him.

"Don Brash says it's all the parents' fault -- it's not. We've got all this red tape and there is no facility to take action and turn the tide," Mr Norris said.

"It's an epidemic. It's huge. As a parent all I want to do is get rid of these bastards who are actively creating a market for P."

- NZPA