| Essexboys
- Articles |
??/01/96
- Too young to die
Mixmag
LEAH BETTS Words: Jane Headon LEAH Betts will never know
just how famous her last hours made her. Leah brought
her 18th birthday party to an abrupt halt, collapsing
on the bathroom floor in her family home, confessing in
her dying moments to her father that she had taken an
ecstasy tablet.
As she lay in a coma, her name became front page news.
But who was Leah Betts and just what happened in the early
hours of November 12th? The Betts residence is a small
farm in the sleepy Essex village of Latchendon. Both Leah's
father Paul and his wife, Janet, opened their door to
the media in the days following the demise of their daughter.
Paul Betts, a recently retired police inspector, knew
relatively little about ecstasy up till now. The last
two weeks, he said, have seen him become something of
an expert. The liv ing room is littered with sympathy
cards and flowers. Paul points to a large pile of unopened
mail, saying that there are two more piles in the kitchen.
He has, he says, received over 100 promises from youngsters,
alleging that they will never touch E again. "She
was a family girl," says Paul of Leah, "I've
been asked what was she like so much recently and nothing
really jumps out to say. She wasn't a raving beauty but
she was pretty. She was bubbly, she enjoyed life."
Leah had three sisters aged 19, 20 and 22 and a younger
brother aged 11. "She was very much a young Miss,"
says Paul. "Like most people, when you don't have
the same principles, words can ensue and she was quite
happy to put her thoughts and feelings forward."
Leah was a second year 'A' level student at Basildon College.
She was studying Biology, Chemistry and Psychology 'A'
levels. She had intended to take a year off to go to France
before following in the footsteps of her three elder sisters
and going to university. Paul says she was an ideal student.
"She worked hard. She would go out but she was not
what I would call a clubbing person.
She went to Raquel's as far as I know, but she spent most
of her time studying." At Basildon college, her friends
were too grief stricken to talk to the press, following
Leah's collapse. Some of them, Adam, aged 17, Addy, 18
and Simon 17 left a simple message on school exercise
paper.
It read: "The party on Saturday night was an 18th
birthday party and not a drugs party. We want everyone
to know that. We are all desperate and want Leah to get
better." Leah didn't get better and her death has
made her friends far too nervous to speak to the press.
LEAH Betts was no dance kid, she was far more of an indie
fan.
Her favourite band was Oasis, she also loved REM. Her
sisters are in shock over her death as they always believed
Leah held the firm opinion that drugs were 'stupid'. So
what happened that night? Leah had a Saturday job in Basildon
at Alders. She left work and made her way home with a
friend, who can't be named for legal reasons.
En route they met a local dealer who supplied them with
two ecstasy tablets each. It was not a spontaneous street
deal, it had been pre-arranged and the man involved was
a known ecstasy dealer in Raquel's nightclub in Basildon.
Leah and her friend took one ecstasy tablet each at 8.30pm,
and for four hours they enjoyed her 18th birthday celebrations.
There was no alcohol, Paul Betts cleared it out of the
living room and asserts that Leah herself had said she
didn't want any alcohol. There were abundant amounts of
coca-cola and lemonade and although some of the lads turned
up with a couple of cans of lager, there was certainly
no danger of anyone getting drunk.
That had been the Betts' worst fear. The first indication
that anything was wrong was when Leah's younger brother
went to get Mrs Janet Betts. "He said, 'Leah wants
you in the bathroom, she's not feeling very well,'"
explains Janet. "I went up to the bathroom and she
was bent over the washbasin.
I said, 'What's the matter, Leah?' and she turned round.
I saw her pupils were like saucers - I've never seen pupils
like that, not even in neuro-patients." Janet, a
senior staff nurse who lectures in schools about the dangers
of drugs, said she knew straight away what Leah had taken.
She exclaimed, 'Oh My God, Leah, what have you done?'
At this point, Leah was violently sick. She then complained
that her legs were going numb. As she did, they collapsed
under her. Paul came upstairs and helped Janet get her
into their bedroom and the recovery position.
"On the bedroom floor, she started going stiff,"
remembers Janet, "she kept jerking and clawing me,
I've still got the marks on my arms. She was yelling 'Please
help me!' and she kept going on about the pain in her
head." Suddenly, she stopped breathing.
Although her parents resuscitated her and kept her body
organs going, she actually died in her father's arms a
mere ten minutes after she had first started complaining
of feeling unwell. During those ten minutes Paul tried
to find out everything he could. "When she was dying
I reverted back to police officer mode - Where? When?
Why? How?
She told us who had supplied the tablet, she told us that
at least twice she had taken these, that they had never
affected her before, that she had taken ones with doves
on them before but the one tonight had an apple on it.
Her dying declaration, hoping that something she said
would enable us to help her was that she had taken it
twice before. Her third attempt became fatal."
AMIDST the panic, an ambulance was called and everyone,
including some lads, who Paul says had been smoking spliff,
pulled together to get Leah to hospital as fast as possible.
The police then arrived and searched everyone. Leah's
friend who had the second E on her is currently waiting
to hear whether she will be charged.
Paul fears that she may receive a severe sentence in order
to make an example of her. After Leah was put on a life
support system, her parents released a photograph of her
lying in a coma. The result was a huge media furore. Mixmag's
editor, Dom Phillips, appeared on Newsnight debating the
issue against a Conservative MP, Nigel Evans.
In the media furore that followed, Mixmag was inundated
with calls from the world's media, desperate for comment
on the ecstasy issue. The first, frantic thought was that
the tablet Leah had taken came from a batch of contaminated
ecstasy tablets.
Tests quickly revealed that she had taken pure ecstasy
and as her life support system was switched off four days
later and her organs donated for transplant, in compliance
with her wishes, the quest for answers increased. The
vast majority of ecstasy-related deaths in this country
occur from overheating.
Ecstasy-users, dancing wildly, forget to replenish their
bodily fluids. They become dehydrated and death occurrs
as a result of heatstroke. Leah wasn't dancing, she was
drinking plenty of non-alcoholic fluids. What went wrong?
"The pathologist said she died from ecstasy poisoning
causing brain stem death," said Janet Betts.
The cause of death was given as 'ecstasy poisoning'. A
full inquest is scheduled for early next year. But leaked
results of a blood test, printed in the national press,
show that Leah Betts plasma sodium level, a measure of
how diluted her blood was, had fallen to 126 millimoles
per litre from an average of 135-145.
Doctor John Henry, Director of the National Poisons Unit
at Guy's Hospital London believes fluid excess was the
most likely cause of death in the absence of her dancing.
"I think she felt ill, so she took water but she
obviously took too much. Water is not an antidote to ecstasy.
Water is an antidote to dancing, to cool the body down."
It is believed that there are two other recorded cases
of ecstasy users having died from drinking too much water.
One is reported to have drunk about 13 litres, but Doctor
John Henry said it was possible that Leah Betts had drunk
as little as three litres.
He added that ecstasy was known to trigger the release
of ADH, a hormone which slows the action of the kidney.
Excess water in the body can cause nausea, headaches and
vomiting. HER parents are determined to continue their
anti-ecstasy campaign. Her father says it is his ambition
to get the drug off the streets.
"We'll never achieve that, we'll never even achieve
that. The problem is in modern society that we wrinklies
don't know anything about your generation. We talk a lot
of twat and twaddle. But we do hope that it makes people
aware of the dangers. I don't want any other parents to
suffer the agony and heartache that Jan and I have suffered."
Paul Betts is right about one thing. Not enough is known
about ecstasy. Conservative estimates of the amount of
people taking E on a weekly basis put it at around half
a million. Very, very little is known about its long term
effects.
But, if there is a positive side to the untimely death
of Leah, it is that many more people know much more than
they did before. The Betts are not even out for revenge,
they are just determined that people should wake up to
the dangers.
"I blame Leah. I thought she was far more intelligent
than this, I thought she was far more sensible than this.
Where we go from here, I do not know. You don't expect
to outlive your kids." |
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