‘Doomed’ cocaine mule ‘never stood a chance’

A ‘DOOMED’ drugs mule who died of a cocaine overdose on a Lisbon-Dublin flight never stood a chance, the inquest into his death heard.

A total of 113 cocaine-filled pellets wrapped in black plastic film and worth an estimated €70,000 were found in John Kennedy dos Santos Gurjao’s body after he died on an Aer Lingus flight on October 18, 2015.

The court heard the 24-year-old Brazilian, who went berserk and attacked passengers, had five times the amount of cocaine toxicity that had caused previous fatal overdoses. He finally succumbed to the drugs after repeatedly pleading with staff: ‘Help me, I am going to die.’

At a special sitting at Cork International Hotel near the airport yesterday, South Cork Coroner Frank O’Connell said. ‘Unfortunately he was doomed... he was stuck and there was little or nothing that could be done for him.’ Before he was overpowered, he bit a passenger and tried to open a plane door.

One eye-witness John Leonard said: ‘The noise he was making was like something I have never heard before... it was like a deep anguish... just very guttural, from deep within him.’ Mr dos Santos Gurjao was pronounced dead shortly after the plane, which was diverted to Cork Airport, landed. The court heard Olga Miranda Pinto, a Portuguese woman travelling with him, came forward to help translate.

She claimed she had bumped into him at Lisbon Airport. Ms Pinto was arrested after disembarking. Gardaí found 175grams of white powder in her bags. She was released after it turned out to be baking powder.