A woman has fought for five years to find out why her parents died just fours hours apart from each other on a luxury holiday to Egypt.
Kelly Ormerod, 46, went to Hurghada, Egypt, in August 2018 with her parents, her three children and some family friends. Five days into the trip her mum and dad, Susan, 63, and John Cooper, 69, fell ill while in their room at a five-star all-inclusive hotel - after a next door room had been fumigated.
Susan and John, who had been married for 40 years, were poisoned overnight until Kelly found them in bed the next morning ''surrounded by pools of vomit''.
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Susan was taken to Aseel Medical Care Hospital in Hurghada for tests two hours after John was given CPR before he died on the hotel room floor. The couple died four hours apart on 21 August, 2018.
While the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel claims the Egyptian prosecutor "found no concern within the hotel likely to have caused the deaths", a UK coroner earlier this month ruled that Susan and John had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
After a five year wait, Kelly and her family say they have finally been given ''closure'' after the inquest hearing, during which Dr James Adeley, senior coroner for Lancashire, ruled the deaths were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of inhaling the vapour from spraying the pesticide which contained dichloromethane.
During his concluding remarks, he said their family had gone through a "truly terrible experience" as they watched their loved ones pass away. Kelly and her three children now take a ''scoop'' of their grandparents ashes on every holiday they take and scatter them in the sea to ''feel closer to them''.
Kelly had been going on yearly holidays with her parents "for as long as I can remember". She said she is still suffering trauma from seeing her parents "in such a dreadful way" on what was "the worst day of [her] life".
The family had been enjoying a "lovely" £8,500 holiday while staying at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in Hurghada. John and Susan had previously visited the hotel for a week in April 2018 and had ''fallen in love with it''.
Mum-of-three Kelly said: "They were so excited to share the experience with us." John, a builder, and Susan, a foreign exchange advisor, had been sharing a room with their now 18-year-old granddaughter Molly, until a ''disgusting smell'' prompted her to swap rooms during the night.
Kelly said: "I thought Molly had just eaten something funny. She looked peaky, but she said the smell of my mum and dad's room was making her feel sick.
"Dad was absolutely fine, and he spoke about how lovely his night was. I thanked him for bringing Molly to me, kissed him goodnight and he walked back up to his room to go to sleep."
At around 8.30am the next day Kelly realised something was wrong when her parents were not on the sun loungers. After banging loudly on her parent's hotel door at around 10.30am, John emerged wearing a towel wrapped around his waist and was "incredibly unsteady on his feet".
Kelly said: "As soon as he opened the door, I could smell vomit and he was slurring his words. As he walked it was like watching a bouncy ball.
''If it was 3am, I would've thought he's just had too much to drink. My mum was also covered in vomit, it was all in her hairline."
John had asked Kelly to go to the local chemist to get them some medication for their sickness but she felt uneasy and instead called family friend, Louise Clayton, and they asked for a doctor at the hotel's reception.
After the "longest" hour, the doctor arrived. Kelly said: "Both my parents breathing had changed and they couldn't support their own body weight so they were lying down the entire time.
"The doctor called for a second medical professional and it was just chaos. Dad wasn't moving, he wasn't talking, he was just frozen, so the doctors focused on him first, taking his blood pressure, as although my mum wasn't talking, she was groaning in pain so we knew she was still present to an extent."
Despite the medics' efforts, due to his previous heart conditions, John's heartrate deteriorated and he rapidly went into cardiac arrest. The doctor did CPR but John died shortly afterwards on the floor of his hotel room and the ambulance, that had just arrived, was turned away by hotel staff.
Kelly said: "I fell into a state of shock. I begged my mum to stay with me and to get better, I couldn't lose my mum too."
After a ''painful'' two-hour wait, another ambulance came to collect Kelly's mother - whose condition was by then deteriorating rapidly. Two and a half hours after arriving at hospital, she died.
Kelly said: "I had some hope that my mum would be okay as she was being taken to hospital. The doctors couldn't give me answers about why they'd died."
After a further five ''gruelling days'', Kelly and her children were able to fly back to the UK but it would be a few more weeks before she could get her parents' bodies home. She said: "We held their funeral in mid-September 2018 and it was an emotional but beautiful celebration of their life."
Three years later, an Egyptian post-mortem concluded that E.coli was responsible for the couple's death. After Kelly challenged the Egyptian's post-mortem conclusion, the home office in the UK declared that her parents died of carbon monoxide poisoning but it has taken five years to pinpoint the source.
During the three-day inquest, that started on Tuesday, November 7, Prof Robert Chilcott, a toxicology expert, told the hearing that in less developed countries the pesticide Lambda was sometimes diluted with dichloromethane, which causes the body to metabolise or ingest carbon monoxide.
The Home Office pathologist Dr Charles Wilson told the hearing the Coopers’ hotel room had not been secured and it would be “inconceivable” such measures would not be taken in the event of a double death in a hotel in the UK.
Kelly said: "While I'm still in so much pain over the thought that this could of been prevented, I'm glad we finally have the answers that we've waited five years for. It has been the most traumatic five years of our lives, and our family is broken without them."
A representative for Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel said: "We would like to express our sincere condolences to the family for their loss, our thoughts are with them at this difficult time. We want to inform that the hotel underwent thorough inspections conducted by reputable organisations such as the Egyptian Ministry, Thomas Cook, Preverisk, and Checkpoint.
"These inspections specifically focused on health and safety as well as hygiene standards at our establishment. Moreover, the case has been closed by the Egyptian prosecutor in Egypt after a full investigation having found no issue of concern within the hotel likely to have caused the deaths."
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