The death of a young woman who collapsed in her kitchen after taking cocaine with her boyfriend and uncle, was one of four inquests into drug-related deaths which were heard at Dublin County Coroner's Court yesterday. Two of the deaths involved cocaine.
Martina Griffin (20), Quarryvale, Clondalkin, was discovered by her uncle lying unconscious on the kitchen floor of her home on March 1st, 2007.
Shane Barrett, her partner, told the court that Ms Griffin, her uncle Stephen Griffin and he had shared half an ounce of cocaine together the previous night when he returned home from the pub.
The couple went to bed at about 4am. Martina was in good form and did not make any complaint of any sort, he said.
The following morning Mr Barrett got up at 8am to look after their 11- month-old baby and he went back to bed at 10am when Ms Griffin got up.
At 2pm Stephen Griffin told him that Martina was lying on the ground in the kitchen and was not breathing. When Mr Barrett ran downstairs he found his girlfriend lying on the ground and immediately contacted the emergency services.
Ms Griffin was brought to Tallaght hospital where she was pronounced dead.
A postmortem revealed that Ms Griffin had a significant amount of cocaine in her blood with 2.4 micrograms per mil of cocaine and 6.8 micrograms per mil of benzolegonine, a breakdown product of cocaine.
Dublin county coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty recorded a cause of death of acute cardiac failure due to cocaine toxicity.