The sister of a “vulnerable” UK teenager who died after taking a single ecstasy pill has shared a heartbreaking photo of him shortly before he died.
James Yates, 19, swallowed the fatal dose at a music festival. He soon became sick and was rushed to the hospital.
The “lovely” 19-year-old, who suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, died the next day.
After the tragedy, his sister Natalie Taylor posted a picture of him in intensive care on social media.
“James is proof that drugs can kill. He wasn’t a drug addict, it only takes one time,” she added in an emotional message.
A two-day trial at Chesterfield Coroner’s Court heard that Yates’ condition had been caused by his mother’s drinking during pregnancy.
The teenager from Old Whittington, a village 50 miles east of Manchester, had spent several years in foster care and was not known to be a drug user, but he was easily influenced, the court heard.
His former foster parent Jacqui Kirk described him as “very complex and vulnerable” and said he would “have done anything for friendship.”
“If someone said ‘take these, you’ll like them’, he’d have taken them,” she told the court.
She said Yates had told her he had taken drugs once before, but he said he did so “accidentally.”
After being judged to have the capacity to make major decisions, he left Kirk’s care and ended up staying with a friend.
Last July he went to a music festival where he took one tablet of ecstasy. He was taken to hospital where medics worked through the night to save him.
“He was in a pretty bad way,” Dr. Mark Withers, a consultant anesthetist at Chesterfield Royal Hospital, told the court.
“Everything was done to try and give him a chance to survive, but as the evening went on it sadly became clear that James’s death was probably inevitable.”
Withers said Yates died at 6:35 a.m. on July 24 because of the “complete failure of his body as a result of the ecstasy overdose”.
Pathologist Dr. Andrew Hitchcock told the court the cause of Yates’ death was “multiple organ failure due to ecstasy toxicity”