The mom of Sidney McIntyre-Starko, the 18-year-old who died of a fentanyl overdose in a College of Victoria dorm room final yr, gave heart-wrenching and pointed testimony on day one of many coroner’s inquest into her daughter’s loss of life.
Dr. Caroline McIntyre stated the college “lied” and put out a “utterly false” timeline concerning the night time her daughter died in January 2024.
McIntyre, an emergency room doctor, stated regardless of claiming in any other case, the college by no means contacted Royal Jubilee Hospital to determine Sidney after she was taken there by ambulance.
As a substitute, her daughter was listed as an unidentified particular person through the time emergency room employees had been attempting to save lots of her life.
“I did not make it there,” stated McIntyre. “She was unidentified, alone, and on a ventilator.”
McIntyre stated she gave timestamped proof to the director of campus safety with a view to appropriate the document of response put out by the college.
“This inquest is generally being held as a result of my daughter was left for quarter-hour to die whereas campus safety sat there with Narcan,” she stated.
McIntyre’s testimony was interrupted quite a few instances by presiding coroner Larry Marzinzik, who at one level requested her and her authorized counsel to keep away from hypothesis.
An impartial report launched earlier this month discovered that McIntyre-Starko “seemingly wouldn’t have died” if the college’s response had been higher.
It stated responding safety officers did not determine the overdose and took too lengthy to manage nasal naloxone to reverse the poisonous drug.
Based on the report, McIntyre-Starko had by no means tried unregulated road medication earlier than the night time she and two fellow first-year college students snorted a powder containing a mixture of cocaine and fentanyl.
The opposite two college students additionally overdosed alongside McIntyre-Starko however had been revived. Each testified on day one of many inquest. Their names are protected by a publication ban.
One of many college students recognized a photograph of a vial of gray powdery substance proven as an exhibit because the drug they took.
She stated she and Sidney discovered the vial on the backside of a field of coolers that they had been given and determined to take the medication collectively the next day. She stated she tried to Google what the drug was, and it got here up heroin or opioids.
“There wasn’t a lot dialogue. It was like, yeah, let’s do it,” she stated. “We had been like, it could’t be something unhealthy. That was the thought course of.”
McIntyre instructed the inquest that her job as an emergency room doctor meant that Sidney was “nicely knowledgeable” concerning the poisonous drug disaster.
She stated on reflection, she needs she had talked to her daughter extra straight about drug safeguarding and Narcan.
“It is my life sentence, proper? Like, what else may I’ve executed for my baby?”
The inquest was known as final yr after information of McIntrye-Starko’s loss of life sparked a public outcry.
McIntyre instructed coroner’s courtroom that her daughter was one in every of over 2,200 individuals who died from poisonous medication final yr in B.C.
“Twenty teenagers died [of toxic drugs] final yr, 24 the yr earlier than, 26 the yr earlier than that. We’ve not executed inquests for them and we in all probability ought to,” she stated.
In response to a juror’s query, McIntyre defined {that a} fentanyl overdose will cease an individual from respiration. She stated within the absence of Narcan, giving an overdose sufferer synthetic respiration
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