UK NEWS
NERVOUS EXAM GIRL DIES IN PAINKILLER TRAGEDY
Lambrini
By Paul Jeeves
A teenage student died after drinking a glass of Lambrini and downing prescription painkillers to help calm her pre-exam nerves.
Milly Walker, 17, took the opiate-based pills, which belonged to a friend, hours before she was due to sit NVQ exams in beauty and hairdressing.
Mixed with the drink it led to a massive heart attack.
Milly suffered brain damage and went into a coma from which she never recovered, and died in hospital four months later.
An inquest into the tragedy heard how, in a world first, experts were able to discover from a single strand of Milly’s hair that she had taken the drug Meptazinol.
Milly, who suffered from a slight curvature of the spine, had complained of increased pain and had been due to see her doctor about it.
Her friend Pauline Nichol gave her the pills – which had been prescribed to her boyfriend for a slipped disc – in March last year.
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She was worried about the exam but knew she was going to pass because she had put a lot of hard work into it
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Ms Nichol told the inquest: “I don’t know what possessed me now. I told her to take them to show her mum and ask her doctor if they would be any good.”
She added: “She wanted to do things with her life. She was worried about the exam but knew she was going to pass because she had put a lot of hard work into it.”
The dead girl’s cousin Maureen Holland said Milly had been extremely anxious about her impending exams at Barnsley College in South Yorkshire.
Milly’s mother Jacqueline celebrated her birthday the night before the crucial exam, and Milly and Maureen shared a couple of glasses of Lambrini.
Jacqueline later found Milly “flopped” on her bed at their home in Athersley North, Barnsley, on May 10 last year.
She said: “I knew she was gone, I knew she was dead.” Milly was resuscitated and placed in intensive care, but never fully regained consciousness and died on September 9.
Forensic scientist Michael Hammond said an examination of a foot-long strand of Milly’s hair revealed a “time capsule” of Meptazinol that she had taken months earlier.
The hair was sent to Dr Pascal Kintz in Strasbourg, the world’s top authority on the relatively new subject of scientific hair analysis, who was able to find traces of the “potent” painkiller.
Forensic toxicologist Fiona Burton said Milly had taken a quantity of tablets “significantly more than one tablet but not as many as 28”.
Det Sgt Tony Coy, who led the investigation into Milly’s death, said he could find no reason why Milly would have taken an overdose.
Recording a verdict of misadventure, Sheffield deputy coroner Judith Naylor said: “We don’t know exactly how many tablets she took, but we do know that the level of alcohol and level of tablets taken on their own would not have been dangerous. Tragically, the effect of combining the two proved to be fatal.
“No one should give to someone a drug that has been prescribed for someone else.”
Milly’s parents Nigel and Jacqueline said after the hearing: “We would urge people never to give prescriptions drugs to anyone.”
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