YOUNG MOTHER DIED FROM 'BAD' ECSTASY

24-year-old Regina Woman Died While On Vacation In Vancouver

The 24-year-old woman who died after taking what B.C.'s chief coroner has
confirmed was "bad" ecstasy at a Vancouver rave last month lived in Regina
and is the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy.

"She went up to Vancouver for a vacation, that was all," said her
distraught brother, Steve Nguyen, 22, a cook at the family's Regina
restaurant, the Vietnamese Garden.

"She doesn't know anything about drugs. I don't think she even knew what
ecstasy was or had even seen the drug before," he said in a telephone
interview.

Thi-Tung Nguyen was the family's only daughter and lived at home with her
parents and small son, Tyler.

She came to Vancouver for the weekend and died in Vancouver General
Hospital on Sunday, Oct. 28, after taking ecstasy at a rave at the Pacific
Coliseum the preceding Saturday night.

Chief coroner Terry Smith doesn't know how much of the drug Nguyen
ingested, but said toxicology results released Tuesday showed it was a "bad
batch."

A 16-year-old Vancouver youth, Khanh Vo, also died after taking the drug.

Steve Nguyen said his sister didn't know the youth.

Steve said Thi-Tung was staying with friends in Vancouver that he had never
met. He is certain his sister had never been to a rave or used the drug
before, "but to tell you the truth, I have no idea what happened."

Steve said the family was expecting his sister back Sunday morning when
they received a call from Thi-Tung's 28-year-old uncle, who lives in Vancouver.

Steve, his parents, and brother left the restaurant where they spend most
of their waking hours and flew to Vancouver to be at Thi-Tung's bedside.

"When we got there, we had already come to terms with the fact that she was
brain dead. But we still kept up hope that she would wake up. We were
trying to talk to her," he said.

The family arrived at the hospital at 6 p.m. on Oct. 28. At 10:30 p.m.,
Thi-Tung was pronounced dead.

Steve said his parents and grandparents -- all of whom live in Regina --
still can't believe his sister is dead.

His grandparents were so devastated by the loss that they convinced
Thi-Tung's 28-year-old uncle to come back to Regina from Vancouver: "My
grandparents are afraid it's going to happen to him too, so they moved him
back here."

Thi-Tung -- who was studying to be a computer technician at a Regina
college -- was born in Vietnam and came to Canada with her two brothers and
parents in 1992. Her brother described his sister as someone who was "very
fun to be around and very friendly."

Thi-Tung married three years ago but was separated from her husband. After
her death, her son moved to live with her former husband's family.

Steve said his family desperately wants to keep the connection with her
son. "I think his dad is going to look after him, but we want some time
with the baby ... We look at him as our own.

The family had a Buddhist service for Nguyen in Regina on Nov. 4.

In addition to the two deaths on Oct. 28, a third suspected ecstasy
overdose in southern B.C. occurred on Nov. 1, when a 21-year-old Vancouver
woman collapsed outside the Sugar Night Club in Victoria at 4:30 a.m. She
is now in hospital.

Until these most recent cases, the coroner's office had linked three deaths
in British Columbia to ecstasy, and another two to MDA, a different drug
from the same family as ecstasy.

On Tuesday, the chief coroner renewed his call for anyone in possession of
ecstasy to dispose of it in a safe manner.