Cambridge student who took legal high killed in stair fall
‘Everything felt overwhelming’
A CAMBRIDGE student was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell at his college after taking a legal high weeks before it was banned, an inquest was told yesterday.
Tom Millward, 19, and his girlfriend Daniella Mieloszyk, 21, experimented with the LSD-like substance before trying to sleep off the ‘overwhelming’ effects.
When Miss Mieloszyk woke up she left her boyfriend’s room at Girton College and found him lying face down and naked on the ground. Police believed he had fallen through the stairwell.
His clothes were found on the second floor, and the jury was told that Mr Millward had been known to slide down the banister regularly for fun.
Miss Mieloszyk repeatedly broke down in tears as she described how she struggled to accept that what she was looking at was real.
‘I saw a student called Hamish standing at the bottom of the stairs and then when I walked forward I could see that Tom was lying next to him,’ she said.
‘ I thought it was like a dream. I kept thinking Tom would walk down the stairs and be like, “Oh, here I am”.’
A ban on all legal highs came into force in May last year in an attempt to stem an explosion in their use, often with tragic outcomes.
Miss Mieloszyk said she got the drug, believed to have been 1P-LSD, from a friend who bought it online in February. She and Mr Millward, a first-year engineering student from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, then took two doses each in his room at 3pm on March 5.
‘We knew it was kind of like a legal equivalent to LSD,’ she said. ‘We underestimated and naively didn’t realise what it would be like and had expectations that it would be something that was a fun and positive experience.’
Miss Mieloszyk last saw her boyfriend alive as they tried to sleep off the effects. ‘Eve- rything just felt quite overwhelming. The next thing I remember was waking up, regaining a sense of awareness and in the room on my own,’ she said.
The human, social and political sciences student, who has taken a year off her studies, added that neither of them had taken the drug before.
She told the inquest at Huntingdon Law Courts Mr Millward had often slid down banisters outside his room.
One of his friends, Laura Pujos, said that earlier that evening she had seen Mr Millward and another student try to slide down the banister and jump on to vending machines at the bottom of the stairs near where his body was found.
She said: ‘ Him and [his friend] Harris are always trying to outdo each other. I said, “Don’t do that, what are you doing?” As Harris slid down the banister I heard Tom say, “Laura, don’t worry, he does this all the time.”’
Biology student Hamish Evans, a friend of Mr Millward, said in a statement: ‘I would describe him as an extrovert. He liked to go clubbing and drank quite a lot – I have seen Tom smoking cannabis and I think he told me he has done harder drugs before.’
A toxicology report found that Mr Millward had a tiny fraction of the amount of the drug in his blood that would have been expected at the time of his death.
Miss Mieloszyk also told the inquest that he had experienced dizziness after suffering concussion while playing rugby three days previously.
Consultant neurosurgeon Stephen Price, from Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, said the after-effects of the concussion ‘potentially contributed towards’ his fall.
He added Mr Millward suffered a ‘severe traumatic brain injury’ and was declared dead with his parents Brian and Maisa at his bedside the morning after the fall. His organs were donated.
Miss Mieloszyk was intially arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs with intent to supply but was later released without charge.
More than 100 deaths were linked to legal highs in the year before they were outlawed. The inquest continues.