- Teen died at 'pharm party' after plea for help ignored
- By Peter Michael
- Courier Mail
- 10/10/2008 Make a Comment
- Contributed by: The Rooster ( 264 articles in 2008 )
TEENAGER Melanie Boyd begged her friends to call for help after taking a lethal cocktail of booze and drugs, an inquest was told.
But by the time an ambulance was called, three hours after she was found "blue" and "struggling to breathe", the popular Townsville private schoolgirl, 16, was dead.
In a tearful apology yesterday, Matthew Aubrey, 20, told an inquest into her June 2006 death that the first-time drug taker wanted to call for help when two fellow drug users at the "pharm party" fell into fits of convulsions.
"Mel had a phone, she said if it's happened to them I don't want this to happen to me," Mr Aubrey told the Townsville Coroner's Court.
But the six partygoers talked each other out of calling for an ambulance - because they did not want to involve the police.
"It was not my party, not my house, not my call," said the youth, who was 18 at the time and the oldest at the party.
"Knowing what I know now, I wish I was smarter."
Parents Laurie and Julie Boyd angrily refused to accept his emotional plea for forgiveness as well as that of the teenage girl who supplied the drugs and hosted the beachfront house party.
"We thought we were invincible," said the girl, whose identity has been suppressed by the court.
She said she had not touched drugs since that fateful party.
"It scared me straight.
"I'm sorry it took something this catastrophic to make me realise how precious life is."
"I think we thought we were better and it would not happen to us."
Coroner Brian Smith presiding over the inquest heard "pharm parties", mixing alcohol, marijuana and prescription pills, had become popular among the nation's youth.
In a twist, it emerged that the girls who snorted lines of a white powder, popped up to eight anti-depressants and pain killers, and slammed shots of rum had not taken speed, or crystal meth, as believed by police.
"I told them (the other girls) it was speed. I wanted to be cool, I wanted to be accepted," the girl said.
She said she emptied the contents of an unknown capsule into a bag which they divided up into lines, before raiding her mother's drug cabinet for blue and orange pills.
"There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of Mel and wish it had all never happened," she said.
The inquest continues.
But by the time an ambulance was called, three hours after she was found "blue" and "struggling to breathe", the popular Townsville private schoolgirl, 16, was dead.
In a tearful apology yesterday, Matthew Aubrey, 20, told an inquest into her June 2006 death that the first-time drug taker wanted to call for help when two fellow drug users at the "pharm party" fell into fits of convulsions.
"Mel had a phone, she said if it's happened to them I don't want this to happen to me," Mr Aubrey told the Townsville Coroner's Court.
But the six partygoers talked each other out of calling for an ambulance - because they did not want to involve the police.
"It was not my party, not my house, not my call," said the youth, who was 18 at the time and the oldest at the party.
"Knowing what I know now, I wish I was smarter."
Parents Laurie and Julie Boyd angrily refused to accept his emotional plea for forgiveness as well as that of the teenage girl who supplied the drugs and hosted the beachfront house party.
"We thought we were invincible," said the girl, whose identity has been suppressed by the court.
She said she had not touched drugs since that fateful party.
"It scared me straight.
"I'm sorry it took something this catastrophic to make me realise how precious life is."
"I think we thought we were better and it would not happen to us."
Coroner Brian Smith presiding over the inquest heard "pharm parties", mixing alcohol, marijuana and prescription pills, had become popular among the nation's youth.
In a twist, it emerged that the girls who snorted lines of a white powder, popped up to eight anti-depressants and pain killers, and slammed shots of rum had not taken speed, or crystal meth, as believed by police.
"I told them (the other girls) it was speed. I wanted to be cool, I wanted to be accepted," the girl said.
She said she emptied the contents of an unknown capsule into a bag which they divided up into lines, before raiding her mother's drug cabinet for blue and orange pills.
"There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of Mel and wish it had all never happened," she said.
The inquest continues.
Source: https://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24472715-952,00.html
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