Burnley man died from drugs overdose
A MAN was found dead after taking a heroin overdose, prompting the arrest of three people, an inquest heard.
Burnley Coroner’s Court heard that Sean Finch, 35, had been released from prison weeks earlier and his tolerance levels for the drug would have been significantly lower than normal.
He was discovered collapsed at the home in Thorn Street, Burnley, which he shared with Mark Jackson, Lee Murphy and Nicola Bonsall, on October 22 last year.
An ambulance was called and Mr Finch was rushed to the accident and emergency department at Burnley General Hospital.
But he could not be resuscitated by medical staff and was pronounced dead shortly afterwards, the court was told.
Three people were initially arrested following the discovery of Mr Finch’s body, on suspicion of supplying heroin, but it was confirmed that no further action was taken by police in relation to the death.
In a statement, Mr Murphy, a fellow drug user, said that he and Mr Finch bought a £25 bag of heroin, which they intended to share.
Mr Finch had collapsed onto a sofa after injecting the drug into his groin but Mr Murphy said that this was not an unusual occurrence.
“The heroin me and Sean took that day was no different than before. I did not suffer any ill effects,” he added in his statement.
Pathologist Dr Wahid Salman said that the cause of death was either morphine or heroin toxicity - he had 660mg of the drug per litre of blood in his system. Levels of over 400mg are usually associated with fatalities.
The inquest heard that traces of other drugs such as diazepam, ketamine, cocaine, cannabis and codeine were detected in Mr Finch’s body.
East Lancashire coroner Richard Taylor said that Mr Finch, who was a known drug user, had been awaiting an operation for the amputation of his foot.
Tags: morphine, toxicity
on 05 May 2008 at 6:07 am # Mabella
Right, all cops are corrupt, sorry.
on 05 May 2008 at 6:57 am # Brennan
This is the 6th person the EPD has killed in 2 years. One of them was a 15 year old boy with a knife.
on 05 May 2008 at 7:48 am # Vinnie
I think it’s safe to say it was a waste of money considering he’s dead.
on 05 May 2008 at 8:38 am # Edwyn
The Man got beaten by cops for over 15 minutes by Eureka cops. This is a much more likely cause of death than the LSD. Unfortunatly Eureka CA is such a good old boys club that they will not find fault with the police. Just like the 15 year old shot in the back or the mental hadicapped woman with the flare gun, or the guy who had been shot and hancuffed but the cops wouldn’t let the paramedics help him. Keep in mind this is a town of only 30,000 people but there has been 6 officer involved killing of suspects in less than two years.
on 05 May 2008 at 9:29 am # Jazmin
One other thing, how long was he in custody for? Several hours. Peak plasma levels occur around 3 hours with LSD, so if he didn’t die within a couple of hours AFTER having taken that much LSD, he probably wouldn’t die at all.And as for having that high of levels in his blood at the time of death? Absolutely positive the cops made him ingest it while in custody, or there’s no way those levels would have been so high had he taken that much BEFORE getting arrested.Fishy…
on 05 May 2008 at 10:19 am # Terrance
Uh, no. The LD-50 for lsd is ridiculously high, not to mention the fact that it would be hard to even take that much as you’d be incoherent about 5 minutes in, assuming you stagger the dose.I think the cops grabbed a shitload of LSD and forced the guy to ingest it/got it into his system when he was pretty much unconcious from the beating he recieved, and they’ll now use this report to try and get out of the responsibility for his death.”average lethal dose for humans have ranged from 0.2 mg/kg to more than 1 mg/kg, administered orally” - ErowidFor monkeys it was 5 mg/kg, which means the human LD-50 is probably a bit higher than 1 mg/kg, but not at 5.That is so fucking much, there is no way in hell some homeless dude could afford what would literally be a small fortune in LSD.Lets assume an average weight of 180 lbs, that’s about 81 kilograms. So he would have had to have taken roughly 81 mgs of LSD, I’m low balling here. A common dose is 100 ug, so if you do the math he would have had to have taken around 1,000 doses of LSD.
on 05 May 2008 at 11:10 am # Vin
Breaking news from last year.
on 05 May 2008 at 12:01 pm # Terrell
yep. that’s why they don’t need acid. you ever smoked humboldt buds?
on 05 May 2008 at 12:51 pm # Quintin
Why is LSD use relevant?
on 05 May 2008 at 1:42 pm # Leroi
I am having trouble buying this story for a few reasons-anecdotal evidence: I have been on LSD and I have been around many people on LSD. I have never ever seen someone become ‘combative’ while on it.-10.6 ng/ml is not a high dosage. There are 4-6 liters of blood in the average human body, which means that this fellow had at most 6000 x 10.6ng = 63ug of acid in his bloodstream. This is nowhere NEAR the projected LD50 of acid. To be more precise, this is about .5% of a lethal dose.-The coroner hasn’t even finished the autopsy and the cops are already blaming the whole altercation on the drugs. This is very fishy.EDIT: the 63ug estimate is an oversimplified calculation of the metabolism and absorption, according to an NIH study the peak blood concentration of a 75ug dosage was 1.9ng/ml, putting the upper bound on this guys dosage at about 400ug. That’s quite a bit of acid but definitely nowhere near a fatal dose.
on 05 May 2008 at 2:32 pm # Harrison
i don’t think that i believe you
on 05 May 2008 at 3:23 pm # Kayleah
I assume everyone on reddit has seen the video of the cat on lsd…
on 05 May 2008 at 4:13 pm # Allison
Wow, yeh that isn’t high at all. Guess the coroner is in on it as well if he said that was a “potentially fatal dose.”Hey props for clearing up how the 10.6 ng/ml actually translated into the dose he was allegedly on, I had no clue how to figure that out.
on 05 May 2008 at 5:04 pm # Jeana
perhaps he didnt want to get busted so he drank the liquid vile