A mother who collapsed on New Year’s Eve died from a cocaine overdose – leaving her family in shock.
An inquest heard that Samantha Pentland, 36, was found to have a lethal dose of cocaine in her blood, even though she had no known history of taking drugs, and her partner said she didn’t even like to take paracetamol.
Paramedics carried out emergency first aid on Ms Pentland, but she was declared dead in York Hospital at 9.36pm on 31 December 2022.
Ms Pentland, described at the inquest as a housewife, was born in York. She lived at Moat Way, Brayton, Selby.
At an inquest in Northallerton, North Yorkshire coroner Jon Heath said she suddenly fell ill.
He read a statement from a consultant at York Hospital. She said that after Ms Pentland was admitted to the hospital on 31 December, staff were told she had been “witnessed by one of her children to stand up and then suddenly collapse” earlier that evening.
She was immediately given CPR. “When paramedics arrived, she wasn’t in a very good state,” Mr Heath told the inquest.
“They continued the CPR, but she didn’t get any better. At some stage, they took the view that it was futile to continue and CPR was stopped.”
Her family said she was physically well and “her death had been a complete shock”.
She had no illness prior to cardiac arrest, and no clear cause was immediately identifiable.
Ms Pentland’s GP, Dr Nigel Wells of the Beech Tree Surgery in Selby, said she had been a patient there since 2013, and had no significant health issues.
York Hospital pathologist Dr Craig Bratten carried out the post mortem on 5 January. “In his view the cause of death is cocaine overdose,” Mr Heath told the inquest.
Dr Bratten was assisted by a report by toxicologist Nigel Brown, who is based at Wansbeck Hospital in Northumberland.
He found there was only a small amount of alcohol in Ms Pentland’s blood. But he said the level of cocaine found “was in the range associated with fatality” and was above the amount observed “in a group of people arrested for impaired driving”.
Following her death, police spoke to her partner of 13 years, Nathan Walton, who told them he had never seen her take drugs – she didn’t even like taking paracetamol.
Mr Walton said they’d asked family and friends where she might have got the drugs from “because everyone was in shock that this had happened and none of the family used cocaine”.
Police also made efforts to find who had supplied the drug, “but couldn’t ascertain where it had come from”.
Mr Heath told the inquest: “The problem when you buy drugs on the street is that you don’t know what you’re getting. That’s the risk.”
In his conclusion, Mr Heath said Ms Pentland was in a relationship, she had children and a “loving and supportive wider family”.
She had “no known history of taking drugs” but suffered a drug-related death “as a result of taking an overdose of cocaine”.
Closing the inquest, Mr Heath offered his condolences to her family.
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