Girl died after taking ecstasy: Inquest

[Lunar Loops]

This from the RTE News website:

Girl died after taking ecstasy: Inquest

Tuesday, 1 July 2008

An inquest into the death of a 15-year-old Belfast girl in Co Donegal last July found she died as a result of taking ecstasy.
Ashling McVeigh was the youngest in a group of eight teenagers who took a bus from Belfast to Bundoran on 14 July 2007.
They had brought a large amount of alcohol with them and booked a holiday flat in Ballintra.

The group started drinking when they arrived in the flat around 1pm. Ashling was drinking cider and champagne and took ecstasy tablets, the inquest was told.

Statements from some of the teenagers who were with her described how Ashling began acting strangely - talking in different accents and hallucinating.

The inquest jury in Donegal town heard that Ashling thought she was going to be killed by a horse. One of the girls tried to calm her, but said Ashling stopped breathing.

The teenagers panicked and were afraid they would be blamed, the inquest was told.

The group walked to Ballyshannon and got a taxi to Bundoran where they decided to say that Ashling had gone to bed feeling ill before they went out, and came back to find her dead.

Later they told the truth and a toxicology report found a large amount of ecstasy in her body.

The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence that Ashling's death was ecstasy related.

Coroner Dr Dermot Hegarty warned that such deaths were happening with greater frequency.