GIRL, 15, DIES AFTER TAKING DRUG AT PARTY

A 15-year-old girl who died after taking drugs for the first time at a
Christmas Day party has become Scotland's youngest drugs victim this year.

Kerry-Ann Kirk, of Coatbridge, is believed to have taken methadone, a
prescribed heroin substitute, during a friend's party supervised by adults.
A post-mortem examination is to be carried out and a report submitted to
the Procurator Fiscal. Police said that Kerry-Ann had no history of drug
abuse.

Her body was found in the house at 1pm on Boxing Day lying under covers in
a bedroom upstairs. Her friend's parents, who had supervised the party, had
thought that she had gone home with everyone else the night before. An
ambulance was called, but she had been dead for some time, police said.

Yesterday her relatives were struggling to come to terms with the tragedy,
which is the second to hit the family in recent months. Kerry-Ann's father,
Gerard, died after a long illness this year. Her mother, Marie Kirk, 39,
who works at Boots, said: "She was a beautiful girl and very popular with
everyone. Christmas will never be the same for me or my family again."

She added: "She had nothing to do with drugs as far as we knew. She hated
them. This must have just been some kind of experiment that has gone
horribly wrong. If there were drugs involved, I would take it that someone
put them in her drink or something like that. I do not think she would have
taken them voluntarily."

The party was being held at the home of a schoolfriend, Sean Stack.
Yesterday his father, Kevin, said that he and his wife had been supervising
the party and had seen nothing suspicious.

Mr Stack added that only six teenagers had been at the party, which was
held in the spare bedroom. He had checked on the youngsters regularly, he
said.

Kerry-Ann is the seventh person to die of suspected drug abuse over the
Christmas weekend in the Strathclyde Police area, and takes the total
number of drug deaths in the region to a record 146 this year, a 50 per
cent increase on the total for last year.