A heartbroken mother recalls the moment she discovered her daughter had gone into cardiac arrest after an overdose at a festival.
Alex Ross-King, 19, died after taking three doses of MDMA at the FOMO music festival in Parramatta in January 2019.
The teenager took one pill while on board a party bus from her home on the New South Wales Central Coast and two pills when they arrived about 12:30 p.m.
Alice told her friends that she had taken the pills before the festival instead of inside because she was afraid of being caught by the police.
Approximately nine hours later, the teenager would be pronounced dead.
Alex Ross-King, 19, died after taking three doses of MDMA at the FOMO music festival in Parramatta in January 2019.
Alice’s mother Jennie reminded her daughter to drink plenty of water at the festival during their last conversation. She said Alice had been a good, intelligent and very curious teenager.
Her mother Jennie recalled the last conversation she had with her daughter during an emotional interview with YouTuber Jamie Zhu.
“I just said ‘honey, it’s really hot, please make sure you drink lots of water and stay cool’ and she said, ‘yes mom, don’t worry, I love you, bye,'” she said.
“And that was the last time I spoke to her.”
Alice’s friends Mackenzie and Petra also attended the festival.
“She took one on the bus, and so did I,” Mackenzie said.
‘When we got there, she had two others. Instead of taking it in, she decided to take both at the same time.
A few hours later, Petra knew something was wrong when Alice struggled to maintain eye contact with her and started bumping into people.
The group was discovered by a traveling medical officer who effectively dragged Alice with the help of her friends to the medical tent.
A paramedic evaluated Alice and noted that she had “large, spontaneous, uncontrollable muscle movements, signs consistent with serotonin toxicity.”
He had a temperature of 41°C, so the paramedics applied ice packs to him. Alice’s jaw was spasming, her pulse was racing, and her breathing was short and irregular.
Alice was behaving erratically and almost abusively, which her friends said was very out of character.
“They were obviously asking me questions about what I had taken, and that’s when I started telling them everything,” Petra recalls.
Alice was rushed to Westmead Hospital and lost consciousness en route. Doctors intubated her and put her on a ventilator.
Ten minutes after arriving at the hospital, he went into cardiac arrest and an “agitated” Mackenzie called Jennie to inform her.
Alice (pictured with her mother Jennie) went into cardiac arrest just 10 minutes after arriving at Westmead Hospital after taking three doses of MDMA at a music festival.
Petra (right) and Mackenzie (left) attended the FOMO festival with Alice.
‘I realized something wasn’t right and I said, “Dude, what’s going on? What’s going on?” and I didn’t know what to say or how to say it,’ Jennie recalled.
An emergency room doctor called and asked if he was driving. He asked her to stop and told her that Alice had gone into cardiac arrest.
Doctors administered large doses of adrenaline during a four-hour resuscitation attempt. Ultimately, the decision was made to discontinue mechanical CPR.
A toxicology report found a concentration of MDMA within the lethal range.
Petra was standing outside the hospital when the doors opened and she saw her friends inside, looking at her and shaking their heads.
“That’s when I knew, I just fell to the ground,” she said through tears.
Jennie said Alice had been her “only baby.”
‘What is my purpose now in life? What should I do?’ she remembered she had thought.
A toxicology report found that Alice had a concentration of MDMA well within the lethal range.
Since then, Jennie has been vocal about changing the law and educating young people.
Now he aims to launch a podcast to educate young people about the risks of substance use at festivals and give parents the knowledge they need to keep their children safe.
‘I just want young people to have the information, not for parents to say “well, my kids don’t take drugs.” Ok, that’s great, but are you going to bet your life on it? Because that’s what you’re doing,” Jennie said.
‘Alex didn’t do drugs, for me she didn’t do drugs. But she did it.