A teenager who was bullied throughout secondary school due to having a cleft lip died after buying medication off the dark web to help him sleep.
Will Helstrip, 18, died on May 26 after taking a powerful synthetic drug bought online which happened to be laced with an opioid that is up to 20 times more powerful than fentanyl. His family are certain he did not know how strong it was.
His devastated mum, Ruth, has revealed her son was regularly bullied at school and suffered with depression and mental health issues as a result.
Speaking after the inquest into Will's death was opened on Friday, Ruth told Hull Live : "What I miss is all the hope for the future Will had. His closest family and friends knew he was struggling but we all knew he could come through this. He had a bright future.
“Despite everything, he never stopped telling me he loved me. Now I am not going to hear that anymore.
“We will keep Will’s memory alive, will tell the story of his life, of how he was funny, intelligent, a coding genius, loved listening to music, loved to rap, started to enjoy making his own music, found joy and acceptance within the trance community at Steve’s gigs, insisted on wearing his socks back to front, adored his dogs Amber, Annie and Lola and, of course, was obsessed with pizza and baked beans, though definitely not at the same time!”
Ruth believes Will, who was a talented computer programmer, would have ordered what he believed was a Valium-type medication on the dark web. Instead, the drug was laced with the synthetic opioid drug known as N-pyrrolidino etonitazene.
The mum, who lives in Dunnington, York with husband Steve and Will’s two younger sisters, revealed her son had a troubled childhood, but had recently been thriving and even moved into his own place.
She said: “Will faced challenges from day one, as he was born with a cleft lip and palate, but he met those challenges head-on. At just three months old he had his first surgery to repair his lip, at nine months his palate was repaired and then followed numerous other surgeries up until he was 11, every single one of them taken in his stride.
“As a little boy, Will was determined, incredibly strong-willed, highly intelligent and could be a little monkey, but he was happy, very happy. If I could have stopped time in its tracks, this was when I would choose to do so. However, life changes and time marches on."
It was when Will started secondary school that the bullying really started. He became the target of bullies at his secondary school, not in Pocklington but near York, and little was done to halt his misery.
“As Will moved to secondary school, life seemed to get increasingly difficult for him,” Ruth said. “Years 7 and 8 were marred by constant bullying. We had to request a change of school bus because he was being bullied on the way there. We exchanged countless emails with the deputy head during those first two years because he was also being bullied while at school.
“On one occasion in school, he was injured so badly by a boy who lives just round the corner from us that he ended up at hospital. He was bloody, battered and bruised after having been pushed to the ground and kicked in the head.
“Will told me only at the start of 2022 that unfortunately, any attempt we made to improve the situation for him by liaising with school, only made things worse, so he stopped telling us what was going on. In this same conversation, he told me that in Year 9 he would sit in the toilets to eat his lunch to avoid the bullies.”
Ruth added: "Will was let down... by some of his peers in his own village, by some of his peers in his school community and by his school, who failed to correctly address the problems he was facing and make school a safe and rewarding environment for him to be in. Will retreated into his own world, found his own way to cope with life and slowly but surely we lost our little boy."
In recent years Will had been struggling with severe depression and anxiety, and at the age of 16 openly admitted he was struggling to cope.
But he found comfort in his passion for coding. “As a testament to his strength, resilience and determination, by March 2022 Will was starting to see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel,” Ruth said. “He started work as a software developer for Amplified, an online music platform. He was a coding whizz who seemed to understand the language of code more than that of life itself.
“Only six days prior to his tragic death, he had moved into his own home 10 minutes down the road from us and was looking forward to his career taking off, welcoming his friends round to his house, making some music and finding some peace.”
But Will was still plagued by insomnia which led him down a path of self-medication in a bid to tackle the problem. He used his computer skills to hunt down drugs he hoped would help him sleep.
“Due to his inability to sleep, Will would self-medicate with prescription medication,” Ruth said. “When you’re a computer genius, you know how to order from the dark web and have something sent out to you in the post.
“We do not know what Will thought he had ordered, but what we do know without a shadow of a doubt was that he would never have known it would be laced with a new, highly dangerous, lethal synthetic drug which is 1500 times stronger than morphine and up to 20 times stronger than fentanyl. Will never stood a chance."
While police are involved in helping the coroner gather evidence for the inquest, the family are waiting to hear what the next steps will be with regard to any possible criminal investigation.
“We are hoping that the police will be able to access Will’s computer and mobile phone to try and work out what he thought he was buying and who sent him these lethal pills,” Ruth said.
“As a family, we are now learning how to navigate life without Will. Grief has changed me. We will never get over losing Will, we will never move on from losing Will, we will never feel better about Will’s negative life experiences, we will never find closure, but I am told that gradually, we will learn how to move forward and to carry our grief with us. Right now, all I can focus on is putting one step in front of the other and getting through to the next day.”
The full inquest will be heard at a later date.
