FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL DIED AFTER TAKING ECSTASY 'TO EASE EMOTIONAL PAIN'

A 15-year-old girl collapsed and died after taking five ecstasy tablets, an
inquest heard yesterday.

Tammy Pooley took the drugs at a flat in Diadem Grove, Hull, in October
last year, the coroner for Hull and East Riding, Geoffrey Saul, was told.

Psychotherapist Nadine Littledale said the teenager "was in a lot of
emotional pain" and felt that the drugs were a way of suppressing it.

At the time of her death, she was living at a care home in the city from
which she had a record of absconding for days on end. Although two men were
arrested in connection with supplying the tablets to the teenager, the men
denied the offences and no charges were ever brought by Humberside Police.
Mr Saul recorded a verdict of accidental death. After the hearing, Miss
Pooley's sister Nicky Beardsley, 17, said her sister's drug-taking had
begun with cannabis and warned the liberalisation of cannabis laws could
lead other young people to follow her course.

"Tammy could be a lovely girl but had a hard life and got in with the wrong
circle of people in care homes," said Ms Beardsley. "She was drinking at
the age of 12 and, soon after, started sniffing aerosols and smoking
cannabis and later smoking heroin.

The inquest came at the end of a week in which a three-year-old child from
Islington, north London, was hospitalised after taking an ecstasy pill and
police continued to investigate the death of 10-year-old Jade Slack, who
died after taking as many as five in Lancashire.