Were tragic rugby club pals tricked into taking heroin?
A CORONER yesterday warned travellers of the dangers of buying unknown substances abroad after hearing two rugby players on a tour to Sri Lanka may have been tricked into buying heroin that killed them.
Law graduate Thomas Baty, 26, and business owner Thomas Howard, 25, were never known to have taken drugs before and were said to be ‘innocent’ about them, an inquest heard.
The close friends, from Durham, spent the night after a match drinking in a nightclub and were taken back to their hotel in a motorised rickshaw.
But coroner Crispin Oliver said that during the tuk-tuk journey they may have been ‘deliberately diverted’ and misled into buying a substance called ‘brown sugar’, which they did not know was a type of heroin.
Both men were found unconscious in their beds by teammates the following morning. Mr Howard died that morning while Mr Baty died in hospital after being in a coma for two days.
Coroner Mr Oliver concluded they died accidentally from opiate toxicity after taking heroin. He told the Durham inquest: ‘They had no previous knowledge of this substance and would not have known it was heroin.
‘They took some of this substance, possibly as an experiment, while intoxicated by alcohol.’
Mr Oliver added: ‘I hope this goes out as something of a warning to people when they travel to far parts of the world that they have to be very careful about what they might be encouraged to acquire and take. In this instance, these two boys, who had a fantastic life and future ahead of them, had it taken away in circumstances that can only be described as genuinely tragic.’
The inquest heard the pair met through rugby at primary school and went on to work together.
Mr Baty’s father Paul, a former police officer, said: ‘They had big plans together. They were very hardworking, lovely lads.’
The coroner described the circumstances of their deaths in May last year as ‘very unexpected and very troubling’. A British police officer expressed concerns about the Sri Lankan authorities’ investigation
‘Troubling circumstances’
and told the inquest that the evidence did not ‘sit right’.
Detective Constable Phil McElhone, from Durham Police, questioned accounts by Sri Lankan witnesses. The tuk-tuk driver claimed one of the pair asked him to find some heroin and he contacted another driver to set up the deal.
The two Clems Pirates players were said to have later bought seven bags of a drug referred to as ‘brown sugar’ for 15,000 rupees, or about £65. Mr McElhone said the dealer was never interviewed or charged, and the two drivers’ accounts were inconsistent.
Mr Oliver questioned the reliability of the drivers’ statements because the British men were not involved with drugs, yet were ‘said to be openly asking for heroin’.
The police officer replied: ‘ That does not sit right with what we know of them – it is the opposite of what we would expect.’
Mr Oliver asked: ‘Is it a more likely scenario that on the way back to the hotel they bought something they thought was something else other than heroin?’ Mr McElhone agreed that it was.
Four Pirates teammates who gave evidence to the hearing said they had never known Mr Baty or Mr Howard to take or even speak about taking drugs.