Yahoo News Nurse from Cornwall found dead in Airbnb in Portugal
A Nightingale Covid hospital nurse died from taking drugs for the first time during a weekend away with her boyfriend in Portugal, an inquest heard. Sarah Elizabeth Curr, 46, was discovered lifeless alongside her Swedish boyfriend in an apartment in Travessa São Sebastião, next to the Porto Cathedral on January 26 last year.
During a hearing into her death held in Truro today (July 1), it was heard how the couple had checked in the day before, having flown to the popular tourist destination from London. When they failed to check out, the apartment owner let herself in and discovered Sarah and her boyfriend dead. Police authorities were called and heroin, MDMA and other illicit drugs were discovered in the flat.
A Portuguese postmortem examination found opiates at lethal range levels in Sarah's body and that of her boyfriend. Following her death, Sarah's body was repatriated by her family to Cornwall, where she hailed from, and a second autopsy was also carried at the Royal Cornwall Hospital.
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Pathologist Dr Thomas Grigor told the inquest that his findings were similar to those from his Portuguese colleagues and said the drug taking in an individual who is "opiate naïve" - that is who is not used to taking recreational drugs - had likely led to a heart and pulmonary failure.
Rachel Gosling, one of two of Sarah's sisters who attended the hearing, said the NHS worker had been a vegan, keen runner and swimmer and yoga practitioner who had worked hard and volunteered as a nurse all her life.
She told the inquest that Sarah came from a large family in Cornwall and had two brothers and two sisters. She lived in the Blackheath area of London where she had a great network of friends. She worked as a nurse in the emergency department at a local hospital for many years before deciding to become a nursing teacher at King's College Hospital while also volunteering in Singapore and Somaliland.
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Ms Gosling told the inquest that during the Covid pandemic Sarah worked at the Nightingale hospital during the worst weeks of the global pandemic. At the time of Christmas 2022 she caught Covid herself and missed out on the festive period with her family so decided, upon recovering, to have a weekend away in Porto with her boyfriend a month later.
She told the inquest: "We were not aware of any uncontrolled substance abuse. Sarah's work was very demanding. She lived alone and provided child care support for her wider family. It is unlikely she could have functioned as she did had she been a regular drug user."
The inquest heard how Sarah had told her loved ones on a family WhatsApp group that she had arrived in Porto safely and sent them some pictures of the historic city which proved to be the last time they would hear from her.
Concluding in a drug-related death, assistant coroner for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Guy Davies said the circumstances around how or why Sarah and her boyfriend had decided to buy drugs during their Porto weekend break remained unknown but it was clear that the hard working NHS nurse had not been used to them and suffered from fatal opiate toxicity as a result.
