Tragic allergic reaction girl’s plea

A teenage girl who died after suffering a severe allergic reaction to a Pret a Manger baguette at an airport, said “Daddy, help me” as she struggled for breath, an inquest has heard.

A TEENAGE girl who died after suffering a severe allergic reaction to a Pret a Manger baguette said “Daddy, help me” as she struggled for breath, an inquest has heard.

Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, 15, collapsed on a British Airways flight from London to Nice on July 17, 2016.

She had been travelling with her father and best friend and stopped to get an artichoke, olive and tapenade baguette as they passed through Heathrow Airport’s terminal five.

Unknown to the group, the sandwich dough contained sesame seed, a detail not mentioned on its packaging, according to a statement from her father, Nadim Ednan-Laperouse, read on the first day of her inquest at West London Coroner’s Court yesterday.

Natasha was allergic to the ingredient and suffered a cardiac arrest despite two epipens being applied to her legs. She was declared dead the same day at a Nice hospital.

The family’s lawyer, Jeremy Hyam QC, became emotional as he read Mr Ednan-Laperouse’s statement to the inquest yesterday, at one stage pausing to regain composure.

Natasha at first felt her throat growing itchy and returned from the toilet with vicious red hives on her midriff, the inquest heard.

She was rushed to the cabin’s toilets, where her father applied an epipen.

The statement said: “We waited a couple of minutes to see how she reacted.

“She said she couldn’t breathe properly and it was getting worse and urged me to get the second epipen right away.”

He quickly jabbed the second epipen into her upper thigh, but it failed to relieve the symptoms.

“Natasha said that she still couldn’t breathe and desperately looked at me, she said ‘Daddy, help me, I can’t breathe’.”

She soon lost consciousness and cabin staff were aided by a junior doctor who had been on board in applying CPR for the remainder of the journey.

As hope began to fade that Natasha would survive in hospital, her father put a phone to her ear so her mother and brother could say goodbye.

Her mother Tanya could be seen wiping her eyes as she listened to the statement.

He then called his own mother and asked her to visit a branch of Pret a Manger in west London to examine the sandwich.

Finding nothing on the label or on the shelf, his mother made inquiries at the counter and was handed a folder of information.

“My mother looked down the list and found that the baguette dough had sesame seed inside it,” the statement said.

The inquest continues.

She found that the baguette dough had sesame seed inside it. Nadim Ednan-Laperouse tells of his mother’s discovery after his daughter died.