THREE policemen were cleared yesterday of the manslaughter of a heroin addict who was found frozen to death.

The body of Michelle Wood, 25, a mother of three, was discovered a month after officers drove her to the boundary with another police force on a cold January night and left her, five miles from home.

She weighed less than seven stone, was in a poor mental state and behaving irrationally, her clothes were wet and she had no money or mobile phone, Hull Crown Court was told.

After an investigation, three Lincolnshire police officers were charged with manslaughter due to gross negligence. The prosecution said that they had breached their duty of care towards Miss Wood.

The case collapsed after a six-day trial when Mrs Justice Dobbs, the judge, instructed the jury to return not guilty verdicts for all three men.

She said that the prosecution had not established that there was a case to answer because insufficient evidence had been produced about the duty of care owed by police officers to drug addicts who are released from custody in a town where they do not live.

Sergeant Andrew Hickinbottom and PCs Andrew Wood and Ian Clark made no comment as they left court.

A statement issued later on their behalf described them as “dedicated police officers with many years of unblemished public service” who were victims of a prosecution which had “no credible factual basis”.

Miss Wood’s mother and stepfather, Joan and Alwin Call, said in a statement that the collapse of the trial meant that they “still [didn’t] know why Michelle had to die”. “Michelle had problems in her life but she did not deserve to die in this way,” they said.

During the trial the court was told that Miss Wood was from Grimsby, which falls under the jurisdiction of Humberside Police. She was taken to Skegness police station, on the Lincolnshire coast, after being arrested in Louth on suspicion of burglary in January 2003.

Sergeant Hickinbottom, 40, the custody sergeant at Skegness, decided to release her without charge. He asked PC Wood, 44, and PC Clark, 43, to drive her to a point on the A16 road, five miles from Grimsby, which was just across the boundary between Lincolnshire and Humberside. The constables left Miss Wood near a motor dealership at 8.30pm.

A month later, a pigeon shooter found her body off the A16 near New Waltham. She had died from hypothermia.

James Goss, QC, prosecuting, said that the officers had breached their duty of care towards Miss Wood, given “their respective knowledge of her physical and mental condition, personal circumstances and the prevailing weather conditions”. After hearing defence submissions, however, Mrs Justice Dobbs ruled that the Crown had not explained how Sergeant Hickinbottom should have exercised his responsibilities with regard to a heroin addict in his custody.

The prosecution had not given the jury the required benchmarks by which to judge whether or not the officers had been grossly negligent, she said. “To consider whether what the officers did was reasonable you’d be entitled to know whether there was any obligation for the police to take somebody home — whether he couldn’t have released her there and then in Skegness or whether he should have taken her to Louth,” she said.

After the hearing, Richard Crompton, the Deputy Chief Constable of Linconshire, said that the judge’s comments would be considered before it was decided whether to bring disciplinary proceedings against the officers, who remain suspended from duty.

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