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Festival death was drugs overdose

Submitted by admin on Saturday, 31 January 2009

A “fun loving” woman who hoped to become a police officer, died of a drugs overdose, a coroner has ruled.
Katie Jones, aged 20, and from Henllan, Denbighshire, collapsed at the Kendal Calling music festival in Cumbria last August.
A post-mortem examination showed a high level of ecstasy in her blood.
The Cumbria coroner said such deaths were rare, but when people bought street drugs made by amateurs they were taking their lives in their hands.
Miss Jones, who was working in a ceramics factory, but had ambitions to become a police officer, was attending her first music festival.
The inquest, at Kendal Coroner’s Courts, heard that she had lost track of her friends and was suffering from fits when she was found by St John’s Ambulance staff on 1 August 2008.
‘Toxic effects’
She was taken to hospital but suffered multiple organ failure and died the following morning.
A pathologist said that post-mortem results revealed Miss Jones had taken at least three times the amount of the drug needed to “cause toxic effects”.
Cumbria coroner Ian Smith said: “Ecstasy is not one of the drugs more associated with the death of young people but it does kill people and the problem is that it is manufactured by amateurs.
“When you buy something on the street you do not know what you are buying, or what you are putting into your body. The result can be death.”
He added: “The verdict I am going to record is that she died as a consequence of using drugs.”