SUSPECTED DRUG OVERDOSE GIRL WAS MISSING FOR A MONTH FROM HEALTH BOARD HOME

THE 15-year-old girl found dead from a suspected drug overdose in a city
guesthouse yesterday morning had been missing from a health board
residential home for a month.

The teenager, whose name has not been released, was on a garda missing list
after giving staff the slip and running away while on work experience on
July 28.

She was found unconscious in the bedroom of a bed and breakfast on Lower
Gardiner Street close to Dublin city centre yesterday morning. It is
believed she may have been dead for several hours.

Her 23 year old male companion raised the alarm when he failed to wake her
and a Dublin Fire Brigade ambulance rushed her to the nearby Mater
Hospital, but she was pronounced dead on arrival.

Gardai were yesterday interviewing the young man to try to establish what
happened to the girl in her final hours. He was said to be in a confused
and incoherent state. Gardai want to find out where she had been staying in
the weeks since she left the residential care centre in
Newtownmountkennedy, County Wicklow where she lived for several months.

State pathologist Dr John Harbison last night carried out a post mortem
examination on her body to establish the cause of her death.

It was thought she may have suffered a heart attack brought on by a drugs
overdose but it was not known what drug she may have taken.

Her companion is known to gardai as a heroin user but said last night he
was not being interviewed in relation to any criminal offence. The girl was
from south County Dublin and the Eastern Regional Health Authority
confirmed she was being cared for in a centre run by the South Western Area
Health Board.

"She was participating in a work experience programme and was not present
at the workplace when the staff arrived to collect her on Friday, July 28,"
the board said in a statement last night.

"We immediately contacted the gardai and her family. We have been in close
contact with the gardai since then." The statement said the board and the
staff who cared for her were deeply saddened by her death.

However, Tony Geoghegan of the Merchant's Quay drug treatment project said
while he was very saddened by her death, he was not surprised by it.

He said services for young drug users were sparse and teenagers were
reluctant to seek them out because they feared their parents would be notified.

Mr Geoghegan said there was also a growing problem of young homeless
addicts because there were virtually no hostel places for teenagers and
none that would accept young couples.

"A lot of these deaths are needless deaths which could be prevented if the
services were more geared to get out there and provide the kind of help
that is needed," he said.

According to figures compiled by the Health Research Board, an average of a
quarter of all drug users attending treatment clinics throughout the
country each year are between the ages of 15 and 19.