Teen died of drugs overdose as friends listened on Skype



Patrick McMullen suddenly keeled over while chatting to friends on Skype

They called an ambulance and paramedics found him dead at the family home

Promising student had done well in exams and hoped to apply to Cambridge



Overdose: Patrick McMullen began to slur his words during a Skype conversation with friends in which he confessed to taking three LSD tabs and 500mg of E



A teenager died of a drugs overdose in his bedroom as friends listened helplessly online over Skype, an inquest heard.

Patrick McMullen, who hoped to study at Cambridge, had boasted of buying drugs from notorious illicit website Silk Road.

The 17-year-old took 500mg of ecstasy and three LSD tablets while his parents were out for the day.



Then he went online to chat with friends on internet call service Skype.



One of them, Jack Salisbury, told the inquest Patrick had boasted of taking ecstasy and LSD, and taking ketamine that he purchased on Silk Road – where users can obtain anything from drugs to fake passports.

Jack, 17, said: ‘There were four of us who started chatting on Skype. Patrick told us he had taken half a gram of ecstasy and three tabs of LSD.



‘He was also talking about taking ketamine which he had got from Silk Road. He began talking differently. He was saying, “This is high quality stuff”. He said, “I’m starting to feel the effects now”.



‘It became apparent he couldn’t hold a conversation – he wasn’t making any sense. It sounded like he was banging around the room then he went silent.’

Jack tried calling Patrick on his mobile phone, and raised the alarm when it went unanswered.

‘About 20 minutes later I told my mum and she called an ambulance,’ he said.

An ambulance crew found Patrick dead on his bedroom floor at the family’s £250,000 semi-detached house in Puddletown, near Dorchester in Dorset.

Patrick’s mother Collette, 50, told the inquest in Dorchester she knew her son was a drug user and had begged him to stop.

Mrs McMullen, a director of engineering firm Babcock International, said: ‘I asked him to promise me he wouldn’t use drugs. He said he couldn’t do that.

‘He thought taking drugs was a way of expanding his mind.

‘Patrick had a view of drugs that was contrary to our family beliefs.’

She said Patrick – who had three older brothers and an older sister – was a ‘happy and witty boy with a good sense of humour’.

‘He had done well in his exams and was hoping to go to Cambridge or UCL,’ she said.

‘He was confident and could be obnoxious, but we thought it was just him being a typical teenager.’

Conversation: Patrick collapsed and died while talking to friends on Skype (file photo)

Her son was ‘an independent and confident 17-year-old’, she added, and she and her husband James, a retired Merchant Navy captain, ‘never expected any issues or concerns’ as they left home that day.

The inquest heard Patrick was expelled in 2011 from the Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester – rated outstanding by Ofsted – for dealing drugs to another student.



But he had moved to The Purbeck School in Wareham, and hoped to study computing at Cambridge.

A post-mortem examination into the August 31 tragedy revealed that the cause of Patrick’s death was ecstasy toxicity.

Sheriff Payne, the Dorset coroner, ruled he died due to illicit drug abuse – and warned users can never be sure what might happen.

Drugs: The teenager's mother had pleaded with him to stop taking ecstasy (file photo)

He said: ‘It is a very sad end to a young man, particularly one who felt so confident in the use of drugs.You never know the purity of what you are taking and you can easily come unstuck.’

The Silk Road is a hidden online marketplace. Its many dealers can only be accessed by downloading a browser that is intended to grant users anonymity.

The illicit website trades items such as cocaine, ecstasy, and fake utility bills and driving licences using the encrypted digital currency ‘bitcoins’.