Lowestoft teenager Ben Moughton drowned after taking 3 'Orange Tesla' MDMA tablets, Suffolk Coroner's Court told
A Lowestoft teenager drowned in an area of water-logged grass just hours after taking three MDMA pills, an inquest heard.
Ben Moughton, 19, inhaled water after he ended up face down in rain-soaked ground in Linear Park, near the Waterlane Leisure Centre in the town, an inquest at Suffolk Coroner's Court heard yesterday.
The hearing was told on May 30 last year Mr Moughton, of Clarkson Road, had taken three 'Orange Tesla' MDMA tablets he and a group of friends had bought that day, and that his behaviour had become increasingly strange and erratic.
Later that night he ended up laying in boggy ground and his head was submerged under water for around 45 seconds, the inquest was told, before another group of friends he later met up with managed to pull him out.
The inquest heard Mr Moughton was not a regular drug user, and that it was probably the second time he had taken any pills.
Lee Kinney, a senior paramedic at the East of England Ambulance Trust, was the first emergency service on the scene and told the inquest witnesses had described Mr Moughton becoming 'incomprehensible' and then 'jumping into the watery area alongside the footpath'. By the time he had got to him, the hearing was told, Mr Moughton was unresponsive.
Michael Long, another paramedic who attended the scene shortly after at about 10.10pm, said Mr Moughton was 'soaking wet' and was completely unresponsive, being at the lowest end of the Glasgow Coma Scale.
"He started acting irrationally and jumped into water," he told the inquest. He added when friends tried to pull him out "he was holding on to weeds and debris in the water to stay in".
They rushed him to the nearest accident and emergency at James Paget Hospital, in Great Yarmouth, and alerted doctors ahead of their arrival because of the seriousness of his condition.
But, just before they could take him through the doors, he went into cardiac arrest.
Dr Jonathan Agass, who fought to save Mr Moughton's life, said the teenager was brought into the hospital as paramedics were frantically trying to resuscitate him.
And Daryl Tupper-Carey, an anaesthetist and intensive care doctor at the Norfolk hospital, told the court initial tests carried out had shown how seriously ill Mr Moughton was on arrival and said there were signs he had inhaled water.
At 11.40pm doctors decided to stop resuscitation efforts as he was not responding and his condition was deteriorating.
Toxicology tests found MDMA levels at 2.95 microgrammes per millilitre, which Dr Rebecca Andrews of Imperial College London, said would fall inside the levels expected of a fatality.
Detective Sergeant Simon Fitch, of Suffolk Police, told the court there had been criminal proceedings against the person who had supplied him with the MDMA, and that they had now ended.
DS Fitch said the labourer and aspiring carpenter, who was planning a move to West Sussex, had recently ended a relationship, and told the court Mr Moughton felt 'free to do more of what he wanted to do'.
Assistant coroner Catherine Wood said the cause of his death was drowning and MDMA toxicity and concluded his death was drug related.
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