Did malaria drugs make student leap from plane?
Side effects theory probed as pilot tells of frantic bid to save teenager
A CAMBRIDGE student may have leapt to her death from a plane after suffering an adverse reaction to anti-malarial drugs, it was claimed last night.
Alana Cutland, 19, was said to have been suffering ‘paranoia attacks’ in the hours before her worried parents arranged her journey home from a research trip in Madagascar.
They booked the private flight, from her lodge on the north of the African island, after a series of fraught phone calls and email exchanges with their daughter.
But just five minutes after take-off last Thursday the natural sciences student unfastened her seatbelt and opened the door of the Cessna light aircraft.
Madagascar Trans Air pilot Tahina Rantoanina told the Mail how he and Miss Cutland’s fellow passenger, British tourist Ruth Johnson, frantically struggled to keep the student on board.
‘Ruth was holding Alana’s leg... the evacuation door was open and the seatbelt was already unbuckled,’ he said. ‘[Miss Cutland] wasn’t speaking, she did not even react to the cries of the other woman.
‘I was holding the door and steering at the same time... I had to let go of the door to stabilise the plane.’ Miss Cutland ‘said nothing, did nothing, wasn’t even replying’
to Miss Johnson’s appeals, he said. ‘There was not a single word.’
After stabilising the plane, Mr Rantoanina resumed attempts to save Miss Cutland. ‘ The top of Alana’s body was already out the plane, her whole torso. We held her legs, but we weren’t able to keep holding on,’ he said.
Miss Cutland is thought to have fallen 5,000ft to her death. A police spokesman said: ‘ She jumped at high altitude and without a parachute. The chances of survival were all but non-existent.’
The undergraduate, from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, had been studying crabs on the island but was reportedly struggling to manage her research and private life.
Mr Rantoanina said Miss Johnson had explained that the student’s health had deteriorated and she ‘was becoming strange’.
One theory being investigated is that she may have suffered a severe reaction to anti-malaria drugs, police said. It is understood that anti-malarials doxycycline and Lariam – also known as mefloquine – were found in her luggage. Lariam can cause serious side
‘The chances of survival were non-existent’
effects such as panic attacks and hallucinations and is not recommended for people with previous mental health problems. Yesterday Miss Cutland’s uncle Lester Riley, 68, said that when the student had spoken to her mother days before her death she had been ‘in a really bad way’ and ‘mumbling’. He told MailOnline: ‘She had taken ill after being there for a few days and when she spoke to her mother on the phone two days before the accident she was mumbling and sounded pretty incoherent... she wanted to finish her trip but her mum said it was best she come home and get better, and she finally agreed to that.
‘We think she had suffered a severe reaction to some drugs, but not anti-malaria ones, because she had taken those on her trip last year to China without any side effects,’ he said.
Madagascan military planes and boats were involved in the search for Miss Cutland’s body yesterday amid fears it could be lost at sea.The area where Miss Cutland disappeared is particularly isolated, with many parts uninhabited.
The source said investigators were keen to find her body as a post-mortem examination may reveal what medication was in her bloodstream.
A police spokesman said: ‘This is crucial because a bad reaction to has been put forward as a reason for the tragedy.’
Miss Cutland’s family said she was ‘particularly excited’ to carry out research in the Indian Ocean, having raised the money to fund the six-week trip herself.
However, she cut the trip short after eight days after speaking to her parents Alison and Neil Cutland, both 63. They arranged for the plane to take her to Madagascar’s Ivato Antananarivo international airport from where she was due to fly to Paris, then London.
The couple have said they are ‘heartbroken’ at the loss of their ‘wonderful, beautiful daughter’.