Woman died of brain injuries caused by drugs

A 19-year-old woman died of brain injuries caused by a reaction to drugs, an inquest in Dublin City Coroner's Court heard yesterday.

Avril Reilly, with an address at the City Manor Hostel on Gardiner Street, Dublin, suffered an adverse reaction to a mixture of cocaine and morphine on June 8th last.

She died in the Mater Hospital four days later when her life-support machine was switched off.

Reilly's boyfriend at the time of her death, David Floodgate, said they had been living together in a hostel and consuming heroin and cocaine regularly in the weeks prior to her death. They had spent thousands of euro on drugs.

Mr Floodgate said he knew Reilly had smoked heroin for some time, and that in the two weeks before she died she had begun injecting the drug. She would inject heroin in the morning and afternoon, and then mix it with cocaine and inject that at night.

He recalled that on the night she died Reilly had injected a mixture of cocaine and heroin into her groin. Some time later she began having "convulsions" on the hostel room bed, had trouble breathing and her face turned blue. Mr Floodgate said he called an ambulance.

A statement from the hostel porter said Mr Floodgate ran downstairs and shouted "my girlfriend is dying". When he reached the bedroom he saw Reilly "shaking" like she was having a fit.

A garda, Sgt Sinéad Power, said when she saw Reilly she was having a seizure from an "apparent overdose". She also said Reilly had bruising to her legs and groin but there were "no suspicious circumstances" surrounding the incident. She also recalled Reilly's life-support machine being switched off.

Deputy coroner Maria Colbert said Reilly had suffered irrecoverable damage to her brain due to a lack of oxygen, which had been brought on by a reaction to the mixture of cocaine and morphine she had consumed.

Ms Colbert made a ruling of death by misadventure caused by hypoxic ischaemic injury to the brain caused by drug intoxication.