A promising student died on her first night at university after consuming a lethal mix of alcohol and ketamine, a coroner has ruled. Jeni Larmour's lifeless body was found just hours after she arrived to study at Newcastle University.
The 18-year-old, from Newtonhamilton, Northern Ireland, drank alcohol with her new flatmates between 5pm and 7pm on October 3, 2020. Later in the evening, with her judgement "impaired", she sniffed a quantity of ketamine with new flatmate Kavir Kalliecharan.
Giving evidence at Newcastle Coroner's Court on Tuesday, Mr Kalliecharan said he was left sick by the drug and vomited for hours before falling asleep. He woke to find Ms Larmour lying lifeless and face down on his bedroom floor at about 5am.
Mr Kalliecharan had told Ms Larmour before they took the drugs: "This is how we do it in England." He told the coroner he was referring to the English university experience and had never taken ketamine before.
Specialist police officers using sniffer dogs searched the flat in Park View halls and found ketamine, cannabis and MDMA in Mr Kalliecharan's room but he insisted the ketamine was not his. No other drugs were found in student rooms in the flat, including Ms Larmour's, the inquest heard.
Ms Larmour used her mobile phone to film a Snapchat video showing her in Mr Kalliecharan's bedroom with white powder on a table, the inquest heard. Andrew Metcalfe, then an acting detective sergeant with Northumbria Police, said the video revealed no evidence of Ms Larmour or Mr Kalliecharan coercing or pressuring the other to take drugs.
Mr Kalliecharan, 20, from Leeds, was not charged with supplying the ketamine and told police it was Ms Larmour's. Immediately after Ms Larmour's death, Mr Kalliecharan told flatmates he felt it was his "fault", explaining at the inquest he felt "guilt" not in a criminal sense but through "moral responsibility".
Having heard from Mr Kalliecharan, other student witnesses, a Home Office pathologist and police, Coroner Karen Dilks concluded Ms Larmour's death, on the balance of probailities, was due to misadventure. She defined that as unintentional acts and events.
Lucy Backhurst, the university's academic registrar and director of student services, addressed Ms Larmour's parents David and Sandra at the start of her evidence. She said: "Jeni was just the sort of bright, able student we want studying with us at Newcastle University." Her chosen course, urban planning and architecture, was hard to get on to and "not for the faint-hearted", she told them.
She said the university had a compulsory online induction programme with information about drink and drugs. But the messaging was not easy, she admitted, and after Ms Larmour's death there was a backlash when the vice-chancellor emailed students a "stark" warning about the risks of drink and drugs.
Ms Backhurst said: "We got an awful lot of kickback from students (saying), 'Who do you think you are, telling us what to do'? It's a balance."
Mrs Dilks urged the university to look again at its induction course on drink and drugs, given that none of the flatmates who gave evidence at the inquest could recall any information from it. The coroner also said the university's work on drink and drugs advice was continually evolving and it was working well with other organisations on its programme.
