A YOUNG father who collapsed following an all-night crack cocaine binge died after five days in intensive care. Wayne Parter suffered a heart attack caused by the drug and never regained consciousness, an inquest was told.

The unemployed welder had bought the drug in Faversham on September 28 and smoked it at his girlfriend Samantha Morris's home in Frognal Lane, Teynham, near Sittingbourne throughout that night.

But at 7.30am the following morning he collapsed and started fitting. He died in the intensive care unit at Kent and Canterbury Hospital on October 3. Miss Morris told the coroner, Rebecca Cobb, that until then Mr Parter, who split his time between her home and his mother's in Willow Avenue, Faversham, had never taken drugs in her presence.

She said: "He occasionally spoke about them and said how much he would like to try them. I took him seriously."

When he returned from Faversham he was in a good mood and had some crack cocaine, she said. "He began inhaling it and became immediately high. He was chatting to me and seemed euphoric. The effect of the drug only lasted about 10 minutes."

The couple spent the night talking about their relationship. Throughout the night Mr Parter returned to the dining room to smoke the drug, having his last smoke at 7am. About half an hour later he slumped onto the floor and started fitting. Miss Morris rang for an ambulance and gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation as she waited for it to arrive.

Mr Parter's mother, Pearl, told the inquest she had been concerned about her son since he had had a car accident a couple of months before. She said: "He was not his usual vibrant self. He had not been himself emotionally. He had been down, and that was not like him."

She asked pathologist Dr George Vittay if an undetected injury from the accident could have caused her son's death, not the crack cocaine. But Dr Vittay said he was satisfied Mr Parter had died from a cardiac arrest due to cocaine toxicity and there was no evidence he had been injured in the crash.

He said: "Cocaine can have dramatic effects on one person and nothing untoward on another. It is not possible to predict who will develop these complications."

Verdict: misadventure.