Amy Pickard Inquest Begins
I saw the documentary. Her case upset me at the time and stayed with me for a long time afterwards. I don’t remember hearing about her death before today.
The inquest into the death of an East Sussex woman who died eight years after slipping into a heroin-induced coma has begun.
Amy Pickard was 17 when she was found with her boyfriend, collapsed in a locked cubicle at public toilets in Hastings in 2001.
Amy was seven months pregnant at the time. Her baby was delivered but died five days later.
She was left in a persistent vegetative state from which she never recovered.
Together with her boyfriend, Amy had gone into the town to buy a cot for her unborn baby.
The pair were found in the cubicle after it is believed Amy had experimented with the class A drug for the first time.
Her boyfriend died a week later from a heroin overdose.
In 2007, Ms Pickard featured as part of a BBC documentary titled The Waking Pill, after hopes that the drug Zolpidem – used as a treatment for insomnia – could help revive her.
Weeks after taking the drug, she began to breathe by herself, instead of through a hole in her throat. She reacted to food and showed signs of awareness.
She died in a care home in Hastings in October 2009.
The inquest is taking place at Hastings Magistrates’ Court.
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