Ecstasy, water killed man: report

A lethal overdose of ecstasy and water is to blame for the death of one man during a rash of overdoses in Chase, B.C., last year, a coroner's report has concluded.

A toxicology report showed Christopher John Henry, 19, had a deadly amount of ecstasy in his system when paramedics and RCMP were called to a home about 58 kilometres northeast of Kamloops during the early hours of Jan. 5, 2009.

Emergency responders found Henry in a state of delirium. He had smoked marijuana, taken ecstasy and consumed about eight litres of water, coroner Gail Holotuk said in the report.

The paramedics struggled to get him onto a stretcher and into an ambulance and when he worked his way free of the stretcher's seatbelts the ambulance pulled over and the police were called to put Henry in handcuffs.

Holotuk said Henry suffered a cerebral edema resulting from excessive water intake and an overdose of ecstasy. He was declared brain dead on Jan. 7, 2009, and taken off life support.

She said the paramedics were inexperienced and had not treated an ecstasy overdose before. They were also not familiar with the restraint devices in the ambulance.

But the pathologist and medical specialists concluded Henry's chance of recovery was slim following his collapse. Holotuk said any actions the paramedics took did not contribute to Henry's death.

Overdose outbreak

The same night, a 51-year-old Chase man also died after reportedly drinking, injecting drugs, and smoking hash.

A coroner's report into that second death has yet to be released, but the man's girlfriend was also taken to hospital that night to be treated for an apparent drug overdose.

At the time, police speculated that a batch of tainted ecstasy might have been responsible for the two unusual deaths in the remote community, but tainted drugs were not blamed by the coroner in Henry's death.

In November, a young Whistler man also died, and another young man was hospitalized after reportedly overdosing on ecstasy.