Fifteen-year-old girl died after taking ecstasy 'to ease emotional pain'

A 15-year-old girl collapsed and died after taking five ecstasy tablets, an inquest heard yesterday.

Tammy Pooley took the drugs at a flat in Diadem Grove, Hull, in October last year, the coroner for Hull and East Riding, Geoffrey Saul, was told.

Psychotherapist Nadine Littledale said the teenager "was in a lot of emotional pain" and felt that the drugs were a way of suppressing it.

At the time of her death, she was living at a care home in the city from which she had a record of absconding for days on end. Although two men were arrested in connection with supplying the tablets to the teenager, the men denied the offences and no charges were ever brought by Humberside Police. Mr Saul recorded a verdict of accidental death. After the hearing, Miss Pooley's sister Nicky Beardsley, 17, said her sister's drug-taking had begun with cannabis and warned the liberalisation of cannabis laws could lead other young people to follow her course.

"Tammy could be a lovely girl but had a hard life and got in with the wrong circle of people in care homes," said Ms Beardsley. "She was drinking at the age of 12 and, soon after, started sniffing aerosols and smoking cannabis and later smoking heroin.

The inquest came at the end of a week in which a three-year-old child from Islington, north London, was hospitalised after taking an ecstasy pill and police continued to investigate the death of 10-year-old Jade Slack, who died after taking as many as five in Lancashire.