Mum-of-three left paralysed after vape 'spiked with Mamba' in nightclub

A mum-of-three has told how she was left unable to breathe and paralysed for two days after her vape was apparently spiked during a night out.

Emma Sugrue-Lawrence, 43, claims her vape was laced with the liquid chemical Mamba when she was in a nightclub.

The 43-year-old says she was left struggling to breathe and unable to control her body after the incident at the Grain Store nightclub in Wolverhampton on Saturday, 21 August.

Sugrue-Lawrence says a stranger approached her to ask if he could buy her a drink at the bar, and despite declining he found her again later on.

Thinking he was with the same group she was with, she handed him her vape to try, which he took into the toilet then returned to her.

Within ten minutes after using it when he had given it back, the married mum-of-three, from Telford, Shropshire, said she started to feel dizzy and sweaty, then found herself paralysed and unable to stay conscious.

Friends called paramedics for help and one took a photograph of Sugrue-Lawrence passed out on a stretcher as she was taken to Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital. The next thing she remembers is waking up in the hospital, she said.

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The support worker, who took two days to get the feeling back in her legs, says she had been left traumatised by the thought she could have been a date-rape victim.

She said: "It played on my mind, the what ifs like what could’ve happened if my friend wasn’t there. It could’ve been a lot worse."

Sugrue-Lawrence said since posting about her ordeal on Facebook, she had been contacted by several men and women who say they were targeted by the same people at the venue that night.

As a support worker for people with drug and addiction issues, she says she suspects the vape was spiked with Mamba spray, which would only need a tiny amount sprayed around the base of the e-cigarette.

She said she is quite "switched on" about things but is concerned about younger girls at risk of similar incidents.

"If they target you they are going to get you any way they can.

“You just wouldn’t think it would happen that way because everyone says watch your drink."

She added: "You hear about these date rapes - I couldn't move, I couldn't talk, I couldn't. I couldn't open my eyes, but I was aware of everything that was going on.

“It was playing on my mind what these poor girls actually go through who actually do get date raped.

“But you know that they're aware of everything that's going on, but they can't move. They can't scream, they can't stop it."

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