AN 18-YEAR-OLD girl in the care of the Health Service Executive overdosed on a combination of heroin and toxic levels of the antidepressant Seroxat while on weekend leave, Dublin Coroner’s Court heard.
The girl, who died on November 20th, 2010, at a flat in St Teresa’s Gardens, Dublin 8, had been placed in care at the age of nine because both her parents were drug users.
She had lived in 20 different places in the nine years before her death and had been a resident of the Redwood Extended Care Facility in Stamullen, Co Meath, for less than a year when she died. She had been on a weekend visit with her grand-aunt in Crumlin when the incident occurred.
The inquest heard that the girl went to a flat in St Teresa’s Gardens belonging to the mother of a man she met on the Luas. The two went there by taxi and on arrival went into a bedroom where she produced two small bags of heroin. The girl smoked the heroin while the man injected it.
They then went to sleep, the man said, but he was woken by the girl’s snores at 3am and moved to the livingroom. At 7.50am he went in to wake her up but her skin was cold to the touch. He tried to administer CPR but did not know how. Having called for help from his neighbours, the emergency services were called and the girl was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to a report from Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis, read out by coroner Dr Brian Farrell, a toxicology report found traces of heroin and her prescribed medication but also registered toxically high readings for the antidepressant Seroxat despite the fact that this was no longer part of her drug regime. This in combination with the heroin was the cause of her death.
Dr Kathnu Naidoo, who had treated the girl at Redwood, said she had threatened to hoard her medication and use it to take her own life. Dr Farrell adjourned the case in order to review her medical records.