When Esra Haynes died, she was only 13 years old, and the reason for her tragic death is both shocking and sad.
Esra was described by the Montrose Football Netball Club, where she was a co-captain, as “determined, fun, cheeky, and talented.” She was an active athlete who lived a healthy life. She raced BMX bikes with her brothers and led her team to a national aerobics championship in Queensland.
However, everything changed on March 31 during a sleepover at a friend’s house. Esra got involved in a dangerous trend called chroming, which involves inhaling toxic chemicals to get high. This decision had devastating consequences and led to her untimely death.
Esra wanted to join a viral trend, so she inhaled a lot of aerosol deodorant. This caused her to have a heart attack and suffer brain damage that couldn’t be fixed.
Her parents were heartbroken. They talked about their loss on A Current Affair with host Ally Langdon. They shared their story to warn other young people about the dangers of inhaling toxic chemicals.
“It was just the regular routine of going to hang out with her friends,” her mom, Andrea, said in the interview. Her dad, Paul, added, “We always knew where she was and who she was with. It wasn’t anything unusual. Getting that call at night was something no parent ever wants. It was terrible: ‘Come and get your daughter.’”
At first, Esra’s friends didn’t realize how serious the situation was. They thought she was just having a panic attack, not knowing she was actually dying in front of them. As Langdon explained, “But after inhaling deodorant, her body was actually starting to shut down. She was in cardiac arrest, and no one at the sleepover recognized it.”
When Esra’s mom arrived, paramedics were trying to revive her and told Andrea that her daughter had been chroming, a term Andrea had never heard before.
Esra was taken to the hospital and put on life support, but just eight hours later, her parents were told her brain was damaged beyond repair. They had to decide to turn off the life support.
Knowing there was nothing that could be done, Andrea and Paul called their relatives to say their final goodbyes. “It was very, very difficult to do this to such a young soul. She was put onto a bed so we could lay with her. We cuddled her until the end.”
“It was really devastating for everyone involved, all her friends as well,” Paul said. “It’s been the most difficult, traumatic time any parent could go through. We haven’t been sleeping, we’ve hardly been eating, we haven’t been smiling–we’re not ourselves…But it’s not just affected us, it’s the community as well.”
After Esra’s passing, Andrea and Paul are doing everything they can to stop the dangerous viral trend that took their daughter’s life. Speaking to 7 News, Paul said he wished he knew about chroming when Esra was alive, so he could have warned her: “If we were educated and the word had been put out there, we would have talked about it around our kitchen table for sure.
“We need to ramp it up and let these kids find out the information first-hand, not through friends or social media. That way, they get the right advice from the start.”
Esra isn’t the first victim of chroming. Over the years, many young people have died from it because it can cause seizures, heart attacks, suffocation, sudden death, coma, and organ failure.
“We’ve got the pictures in our mind which will never be erased, you know, of what we were confronted with,” Paul told Langdon. “Our gut was ripped out.”
We are so very sorry for this family’s loss, and we hope no parent ever has to go through such heartbreak.
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