Family ‘broken’ after couple died when room next door was fumigated for bed bugs
Two British tourists who fell ill in their Egyptian hotel room died from carbon monoxide poisoning, a coroner has ruled.
John and Susan Cooper fell seriously ill in their Hurghada Red Sea resort in August 2018 after the room next door was sprayed with pesticides to kill bed bugs.
Blackburn coroner Dr Adeley revealed today that the treatment provided for Susan was ‘utterly insufficient’.
Susan had been taken to a clinic in the hotel, rather than the hospital, creating a delay of four hours for treatment.
John, 69, and Susan, 63, from Burnley, Lancashire, were discovered seriously ill by their daughter a day after the adjoining room was fumigated.
The couple’s daughter, Kelly Ormerod, said in a statement outside court: ’Our family still struggle to comprehend what we went through that day and feel like it should never have happened.
‘The last few years have been the most traumatic time for all of us. Having to relive everything at the inquest has been harrowing but it was something we had to do for mum and dad. Our family is broken without them.’
The inquest heard in some countries the pesticide Lambda is sometimes diluted with another substance, dichloromethane, which causes the body to metabolise or ingest carbon monoxide.
Following a three-day inquest hearing, Dr James Adeley, senior coroner for Lancashire, ruled that the couple were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning after inhaling the dichloromethane vapours.
Earlier in the inquest, a statement from a German tourist said he reported a bed bug infestation in the room next door to the Coopers.
MORE : Couple died on holiday when room next door was fumigated for bed bugs
The German tourist, Dominik Bibi, saw staff fumigating the room and using masking tape around the door to seal the room, and added: ‘I would not say the job was very professional.’
The two hotel rooms had an adjoining door, but this was locked.
Ormerod, the Coopers’ daughter, described her parents as fit and healthy for their age who had been enjoying a ‘brilliant’ holiday with her, their three grandchildren and family friends when they died.
The morning after the fumigation, the couple failed to emerge for breakfast, so their daughter went to their ground floor room.
Ormerod said her father came to the door saying: ‘I really don’t feel very well,’ with him retching and screwing his face up.
She said her mother was in bed, ‘groaning’, with vomit in her hair and around the room, where she noticed a strange ‘heavy’ smell.
Two doctors were summoned but they were in ‘panic mode’, Ms Ormerod said, as her parents further deteriorated and her father struggled to breathe.
Ormerod formerly claimed that organs had been missing from her parents’ bodies upon their return to the UK.
She told The Sun: ’I do think that my parents bodies are missing body parts but I am getting no answers.
‘I have been led to believe certain organs are missing. I feel it is being covered up.’
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