Caffeine blamed in teenager’s sudden death

Energy drink said to have led to cardiac event

Davis Cripe left home April 26 an active and healthy teenage boy, but in art class that afternoon he fell to his knees and told worried classmates that he felt lightheaded.

He passed out on the floor and was rushed to a nearby hospital. By 3:30 p.m., around the time the final bell rang at school, he was dead.

His sudden death may have remained a medical mystery, the coroner who conducted his autopsy said, if friends at Spring Hill High School in South Carolina hadn’t described what Davis ingested during lunch: Enough caffeine to disrupt and ultimately stop his heart.

On Monday, Richland County Coroner Gary Watts told reporters about the troubling — and what he is sure will be controversial — contributing factors in the South Carolina teenager’s death, while standing beside Davis’ parents.

“He was a great kid,” said Davis’ father, Sean Cripe. “He didn’t get mixed up in the wrong things. You worry about their safety, their health, especially once they start driving. But it wasn’t a crash that took his life. Instead it was an energy drink.”

In the span of two hours, Davis drank a cafe latte from McDonald’s and a large Mountain Dew, then “chugged” a 16-ounce energy drink when he got back to art class, Watts told The Washington Post.

The official cause of death was “caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia,” Watts said.

Holding a news conference was difficult for Davis’ family, Watts said, but the story of a teen who died after legally purchasing drinks containing a drug many believe is safe is “a conversation worth having.”

“I’m not saying that you’re going to die because you have an energy drink,” Watts told The Washington Post. “It’s not the level of caffeine in his system, but the amount of caffeine he took in ... in that short period of time affected his heart.”

Watts said it’s the first time in his two decades as coroner that he’s seen such a case — although he can’t say for sure that other, unexplained deaths didn’t have similar causes. Davis’ friends were key to helping investigators connect the dots.

Watts concedes that there are conflicting opinions about the dangers of caffeine, even among coroners. And he told The Washington Post that caffeine has different effects on different people.

In 2016, the Energy and Sports drink market had $25 billion in sales, an increase of 7 percent in the past five years, said the market research company Packaged Facts.