Thomas Howard and Thomas Baty were clearly not drug users, an inquest was told DURHAM CITY RUGBY FOOTBALL CLUB/PATwo rugby players died of an overdose after mistakenly buying heroin on a tour of Sri Lanka, a coroner has ruled. British police criticised the investigation by the local authorities in Colombo. Thomas Howard, 25, and Thomas Baty, 26, were “innocent about narcotics” but bought a substance known as “brown sugar”, which the coroner said they would not have realised was a cheap version of heroin. The pair, from Durham, were found unresponsive by members of the Clems Pirates team in May last year after a night out in the Sri Lankan capital. An inquest at Crook coroner’s court in Co Durham was told that pathologists had been given limited evidence from Sri Lanka but it seemed “highly likely” that the cause of death in…

Source: The Times October 03, 2019 23:07 UTC