The deadly drug ‘super coke’ which claimed the life of Brendan Feeney
A CORONER has warned of the dangers of taking dangerous illegal drugs after a Co Derry man suffered a fatal heart attack after snorting a drug called ‘super coke’.
An inquest has heard that Brendan Feeney, from Limavady, had taken a substantial amount of Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) over a two-day period in September 2014.
Mr Feeney was 48-years-old and from Limavady.
A female witness told the hearing in Coleraine courthouse yesterday that she Mr Feeney and a group of other men and women “coming and going” from her property at Woodland Walk in Limavady for two days.
She said Mr Feeney arrived at her house on September 23, 2014 with around 10 tins of beer.
A while later she remembered going into the living room where she saw him snorting “three lines of a white substance”.
The witness said she told him to “get that stuff out of my house” before going back out to her kitchen.
He stayed at her house overnight and was still drinking into the next day.
The inquest heard that Mr Feeney had a number of health issues including diabetes, COPD, epilepsy and pancreatitis.
She said that around 11 pm that night Mr Feeney, along with another woman, left her house and went looking for more drugs.
Around 90 minutes later the pair returned to the house and that Mr Feeney “was eating his face off”.
The witness said Mr Feeney was “acting strange” so they checked his blood-sugar levels, injected him with insulin and gave him soup and bread.
Mr Feeney was later seen snorting more “white powder” and a short time after this slumped to the ground.
Some of the people in the house laid him down on the sofa in the living room, the inquest was told.
However, around 6.30am on September 26, the people in the house realised Mr Feeney had stopped breathing so an ambulance was called and a woman tried to revive him with CPR.
He was transferred to Altnagelvin Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit where he took a second heart attack and was put on life support.
Critical care consultant at the hospital Dr Declan Grace said life support was withdrawn after tests showed Mr Feeney was “brain dead”.
An autopsy discovered a number of drugs in Mr Feeney’s system but none in a fatal dose except for “significantly high level” of MDPV or ‘super coke’.
State Pathologist Jack Crane described the drug as a “stimulant” with “no therapeutic use”
He recorded that death had been caused by “poisoning due to MDPV”.
Coroner Suzanne Anderson said the circumstances which led to Mr Feeney’s death “highlighted the very grave dangers involved in taking illicit drugs”.
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