Waitress took fatal overdose after boyfriend said she must have abortion
A PreGNANT woman took a fatal overdose of prescription pills because her boyfriend wanted her to have an abortion, an inquest heard yesterday.
Cassie Turton, 26, had been dating Michael Fysh for around six months when she became pregnant with his child.
But her family told the inquest that she overdosed because she thought he would dump her if she refused to have an abortion eight weeks into her pregnancy.
On Valentine’s Day last year she took more than 150 of the pills she was prescribed for Marfan syndrome – a disorder of the body’s connective tissues that support internal organs and maintain the body’s structure.
her mother Sandra hammond-Grant, 52, told the inquest at King’s Lynn County Court: ‘he made it known to her that he wasn’t interested in having any more [children].
‘If she did not get rid of it he would dump her. This is why she felt as down as she did.’
In a statement read to the court, Mr Fysh said Miss Turton, a waitress supervisor, was convinced that he was seeing other people. ‘ She became unwell and sad,’ he said.
he added that there had been a disagreement while at the flat where she lived alone so he said he was ‘leaving’.
however, she mistook this for him wanting to end the relationship – when he actually meant leaving the flat.
After Mr Fysh walked out Miss Turton slashed her left wrist with a piece of broken glass, the hearing was told. She sent a picture of the wound to him via Facebook.
empty pill packets could be seen in the background.
Mr Fysh told Miss Turton’s mother what she had done and she contacted a friend, Toby Wing-Pentalow, who lived near her daughter’s flat in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
he went to her help and called an ambulance, but Miss Turton then disappeared from the house.
A call handler from the east of england Ambulance Service told Mr Wing-Pentalow that she should be driven to hospital once she was found.
Miss hammond- Grant also
‘Slashed her
left wrist’
turned up and her daughter was located but the family believes the time from the first call to the emergency services at 9.30pm to when they got to hospital just after 10pm was too long.
In Miss hammond- Grant’s witness statement she said she was ‘ running around like a headless chicken’ trying to help the situation.
Miss Turton collapsed on arriving at the hospital and suffered a seizure shortly after that caused a cardiac arrest.
She was transferred to Papworth, a specialist heart hospital in Cambridge, where she died the following day.
Coroner Ms Yvonne Blake returned a narrative verdict, saying she did not believe Miss Turton wanted to kill herself. ‘The deceased was low in mood and depressed due to relationship problems,’ she added.
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