LOS ANGELES (AP) — A nanny who worked for Anna Nicole Smith in the last months of her life said yesterday that she found bloody syringes and cotton balls, and sometimes a spoon with liquid, inside a bathroom that the celebrity model, her lawyer-boyfriend and her psychiatrist emerged from.

Quethlie Alexie, who tended to Smith and her baby for more than three months in the Bahamas, testified that after Howard K Stern and Dr Khristine Eroshevich took her in the bathroom, Smith came out in an altered state.

“When she came out of the bathroom, she was like, drunk,” said Alexie, who testified through a Creole interpreter. “She was unable to walk, falling, and was unable to handle her talking. She would laugh.”

Alexie, who acknowledged she speaks and understands English, said she did not see what happened in the bathroom because “they had the door closed. I didn’t know what went on in there.”

Alexie testified in the drug conspiracy trial of Stern, Eroshevich and Dr Sandeep Kapoor, all of whom have pleaded not guilty. They are not charged with causing her drug overdose death in 2007.

The nanny described finding “ashes from fire” on the bathroom counter and matches or a lighter. Sometimes, she said she found a spoon with liquid and “cotton you would use for a shot.”

She said it had blood on it, as did syringes she found.

Prosecutors claim Smith was being injected with excessive amounts of opiates and sedatives. Alexie testified that before the three went into the bathroom, “(Stern) would say, ’Baby, come and we’ll take our medicine.”’

She described Smith as weak and suffering from bouts of diarrhoea and vomiting during that period, and said she was consumed by grief over the death of her son, Daniel, just after Smith gave birth to her daughter in September 2006.

Alexie testified that before Eroshevich arrived, Smith could not sleep. After the doctor came, she said, “She would sleep all day. In the middle of her speaking she would sleep.”

Outside the jury’s presence, defence attorneys complained about arrangements by prosecutors to bring not only the nannies, but seven other members of their families to Los Angeles to stay in a hotel with them. The group included one husband and six children ranging in age from two to 17.

Deputy District Attorney Renee Rose acknowledged she also agreed to relocate at least one of the nannies to a new apartment in the Bahamas and pay the moving costs, as well as first and last month’s rent. She said it was done for security reasons but did not specify what those were.

Alexie’s sister-in-law, Nadine, who was also a nanny hired by Smith, was scheduled to testify later Tuesday.