Killed by a few beers, 2 glasses of wine and 4 Irish coffees
AFTER working hard all year, Paula Bishop thought she deserved a few drinks to kick off her holiday in the Canaries.
Several small beers, two glasses of wine and three or four Irish coffees later and the NHS pharmacy worker and her husband Stuart went back to their hotel room.
But the ‘ perfect start’ to their holiday turned to tragedy when Mr Bishop woke to find his wife dead on the floor.
A coroner has now said she died from alcohol poisoning, suggesting the couple may have misjudged the foreign drinking measures.
Mr and Mrs Bishop ‘lived for their holidays’ and arrived at the town of Antigua on Fuerteventura at 11.15am on October 20 last year. .
After checking in, the couple – who had been married for 11 years – went to the hotel bar. They then visited a ‘number of establishments [for] a drink’ during the afternoon and evening, her inquest heard.
Mr Bishop, from Ince, Greater Manchester, said his 37-year- old wife had seemed ‘fine’.
‘This was a perfect start to what we anticipated would be a perfect holiday,’ he said.
‘She had a few small beers, two small glasses of wine, and three or four Irish coffees – between ten to 15 units. We went to bed between ten and 11 and crashed out.
‘But I woke up sometime after midnight and found Paula lying on the floor propped up against a chest of drawers.
‘I touched her belly and it was cold and then tried to find a pulse. Her legs had changed colour.’
He ran to reception who alerted paramedics, but they were unable to resuscitate her.
‘I shook her and tried to speak to her but got nothing,’ Mr Bishop said. A Spanish toxicologist said tests showed Mrs Bishop had an alcohol count of 400mg per 100ml of blood – eight times the country’s drink driving limit, or five times the UK limit.
Dr Naveen Sharma, a consultant histopathologist, told the hearing in Bolton the levels of alcohol in Mrs Bishop’s system were ‘fatally toxic’ and concluded her cause of death was heart failure due to ‘acute alcohol toxicity’.
Recording a verdict of alcoholrelated death, coroner Tim Brennand said: ‘ Death has arisen because of a single acute overdose of alcohol on a single day on holiday rather than over a long period of time – and I make clear there is no history of alcohol abuse.
‘The real tragedy here is that it may well have been that both she and perhaps her husband and partner in life did not appreciate the amount of alcohol taken.’
The family of Mrs Bishop, who worked as a senior assistant technical officer in the pharmacy department at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan, said: ‘Paula was a wonderful person and a loving wife.’