Friday 14 October 2022 10:58 PM Jeni Larmour was found dead hours after being dropped at university after being ... trends now

Friday 14 October 2022 10:58 PM Jeni Larmour was found dead hours after being dropped at university after being ... trends now
Friday 14 October 2022 10:58 PM Jeni Larmour was found dead hours after being dropped at university after being ... trends now

Friday 14 October 2022 10:58 PM Jeni Larmour was found dead hours after being dropped at university after being ... trends now

Right now Jeni Larmour should be knuckling down to her final year of studies in urban planning and architecture at Newcastle University, a course that is ‘not for the faint-hearted’ (the university’s words) but in which this brilliant four A* student was expected to excel.

Instead, Jeni, whose young life held so much promise, is buried in a cemetery in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, where there’s a golden butterfly etched on to her headstone.

Jeni did not attend so much as a single lecture in the course she had set her heart on studying after witnessing the ‘heartbreaking’ poverty in the slums of New Delhi on a school trip.

For, within hours of putting her groceries in the fridge at her student halls, this exceptional young woman, who was then 18 and a hardworking, accomplished classical singer, former deputy head girl at her sought-after grammar school and a colour sergeant in the Combined Cadets Force, was found lifeless in a flatmate’s room after taking a lethal combination of ketamine and alcohol on her first night at university. 

This week, at an inquest into her shocking death, Newcastle coroner Karen Dilks recorded a verdict of misadventure, ruling the ketamine was supplied to her by ‘another’.

Her mother Sandra sat through the two-day hearing desperately trying to stay strong for her beloved daughter.

It wasn’t easy, particularly hearing the evidence of her Newcastle flatmates describing how they’d found Jeni lying face down on the floor at 10pm but had left her and gone to bed. Then hearing how, at 5am, her flatmate, 18-year-old Kavir Kalliecharan, found her dead on his bedroom floor.

Jeni (pictured with her mother) was found lifeless in a flatmate’s room after taking a lethal combination of ketamine and alcohol on her first night at university

Jeni (pictured with her mother) was found lifeless in a flatmate’s room after taking a lethal combination of ketamine and alcohol on her first night at university

Jeni Larmour's mother Sandra sat through a shocking two-day inquest into her daughter's death this week

Jeni Larmour's mother Sandra sat through a shocking two-day inquest into her daughter's death this week

A Snapchap video was subsequently found on Jeni’s phone showing the pair in his room, with white powder on the table. ‘That was difficult to deal with,’ says Sandra. ‘How could they have left her there? They knew ketamine was involved. [We were told at the inquest] given the amount of the drug in her blood her body wouldn’t have reacted in that manner had she been more tolerant to it. The stark reality is, in my opinion, Jeni tried ketamine for the first time and died as a result.’

For her daughter, who was brought up with her younger brother Daniel in the sort of remote, rural part of Northern Ireland where distances are measured in fields rather than miles, was not, Sandra says, the sort of girl to ‘be running the streets at night’.

‘She wasn’t a city kid. She wasn’t even a town kid or a village kid, she was a country girl. One thing that sticks in my head is having lunch at a coffee shop with my sister-in-law and Jeni’s cousin before we left for Newcastle. She was like: “See you at Christmas.” She didn’t get to do that.

‘Then, as we were leaving, she got herself a blue slushy drink. That sticks in my head as well. The childishness of it. Her asking: “Can I have a slushy?” and then being catapulted into this world of drugs and drug taking.’

Jeni was one of four young people — three of whom were students — to die in Newcastle that freshers’ weekend two years ago. At the inquest Ms Dilks urged Newcastle University —which, this week, a Daily Mail investigation revealed was so desperate to appease the woke totalitarians that a senior lecturer claimed to have ‘decolonised’ her dentistry course —to ensure students read and understood guidance on what to do if someone became ill as a result of drugs and alcohol.

The inquest was told that, following that fateful weekend, the university vice-chancellor emailed students a ‘stark’ warning about the risk of drink and drugs, but was met with an ‘awful kick-back’. Lucy Backhurst, academic registrar and director of student services, said the general response was: ‘Who do you think you are telling us what to do?’ ‘It’s a balance,’ she added.

Which will be little comfort to parents throughout the country who entrust the welfare of their sons and daughters to our universities.

‘You’re sending children — they think they’re adults but they’re children — somewhere where there’s no adult supervision,’ says Sandra. ‘Maybe the universities could, particularly during freshers’ week, look at having a bit more adult presence.

‘There could be sweeps of rooms for drugs or ad-hoc searchings.’ She takes a deep breath as tears threaten. ‘But none of this is going to bring Jeni back.’

This is Sandra’s first in-depth interview since her daughter’s desperately sad death. She is an articulate 49-year-old with the sort of blonde good looks that, you suspect, would have allowed her to pass for a decade younger until grief dug deep lines into her brow.

Mother and daughter were particularly close, so much so that Sandra, who works as a human resources executive in a large manufacturing company, cannot contemplate the years ahead without her.

‘There’s no peace for a parent without their child,’ she says. ‘You know it’s been two years so far, but I’ve got ten years, 20 years, 30 years potentially and that’s going to be difficult.

‘I don’t want to live any longer but I have to be here for everybody else.

‘The other night — it wasn’t a dream — her voice came to me, saying: ‘Mummy, please help me.’ In my heart I believe those were her last words, her last thoughts.’

Jeni was, as her mother says, ‘super excited’ when they left Northern Ireland for Newcastle two years ago. Like so many teenagers brought up in rural areas, she yearned for the pulse of city life. ‘When we arrived at the halls of residence [on the Friday afternoon] there was a big green area in front of her room that had cows in it. It was a sort of town park. She was like, “Oh my goodness, I can’t even get away from the cows here.” ’

She was particularly looking forward to her first night out in Newcastle. ‘I left her at 4.40pm and by 7pm she was in difficulties. It was such a short time,’ says her truly broken mother.

‘As I walked away from the university [to go to her hotel], there was a group of students coming towards me laughing and having fun. I just thought to myself: “Jeni will really fit in here.”

Her mother believes that it was the first time that Jeni had taken ketamine but died as a result

Her mother believes that it was the first time that Jeni had taken ketamine but died as a result

‘But that night I had an uneasy feeling. Jeni and I would always text on a night out. I always got a response. That night I didn’t. I chided

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