Trio ‘sold toxic diet tablets that left bulimia girl dead’
THREE business partners appeared in court yesterday accused of killing a vulnerable student by selling her toxic slimming pills.
Bernard Rebelo, 30, Albert Huynh, 32, and Mary Roberts, 32, allegedly put food supplements on the market containing the controversial fat-burning chemical DNP.
Bulimia sufferer Eloise Parry, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, died within hours of taking the pills in April 2015.
Rebelo, Huynh and Roberts, all from London, are being prosecuted by Harrow Borough Council for her manslaughter.
According to the charges, they acted unlawfully by placing the product on the market, were in gross breach of their duty of care to consumers, and encouraged the product to be consumed as a slimming agent.
They are also charged with supplying an ‘unsafe’ food supplement containing DNP on the market between February 24, 2014, and February 24, 2016.
Roberts faces a further charge of money laundering by allegedly transferring £20,000 for and on behalf of Rebelo. Rebelo denied the charges against him at the Old Bailey yesterday while the other two defendants were not asked to enter pleas.
Judge Wendy Joseph QC set an eightweek trial to start on April 30 next year.
On the day she died, 21-yearold Miss Parry drove herself to hospital before sending her final text to a lecturer and tutors at Glyndwr University in Wrexham, where she was on course for a first- class degree in childhood and family studies, her inquest heard in July 2015.
Miss Parry, who was known as Ella, said in the message: ‘I screwed up big time. Binged/ purged all night and took four pills at 4am. I took another four when I woke and I started vomiting soon after.
‘I think I am going to die. No one is known to survive if they vomit after taking DNP. I am so scared.’ It continued: ‘I am so sorry for being so stupid.
‘Thank you for everything. I never deserved it.
‘Please pass on my absolute appreciation for all that you have done for me. Thank you more than words. Ella.’ Medics desperately tried to save her life but she died just hours later.
The inquest in Shrewsbury concluded she died of an accidental drug overdose.
Her mother, a chemistry teacher from Condover, Shropshire, told the hearing she did not know her daughter was taking the substance, but Miss Parry had confided with her younger sister Rebecca and close friend Jade Andrews. Rebecca, 17, told the inquest: ‘ For a few years she had difficulty with her eating, body image and her wanting to lose weight.’
Coroner John Ellery said that he would be urging a review of the classification of DNP – an industrial chemical which was historically used as an explosive and herbicide.