Australian Ally Langdon was unable to conceal her anguish when she spoke with a mother and father who were forced to make the difficult choice to end the life of the small child they had given birth to just 13 years before.
Langdon, who is also a mother, tried to contain her tears as she saw the small girl die after succumbing to the chroming trend that had gone popular.
Appearing on A Current Affair with host Ally Langdon, Andrea and Paul Haynes shared their story of how their 13-year-old daughter Esra Haynes died after following a social media trend called chroming, that involves inhaling toxic chemicals through the mouth or nose to get high.
Esra, a young athlete who raced BMX bikes with her siblings and co-captained the Montrose Football Netball Club, was described as “determined, fun, cheeky, and talented” by her teammates. Esra also led her team to a national aerobics championship in Queensland.
On March 31, Esra went to a friend’s home for a sleepover and, for what would be a fatal high, she sniffed a can of aerosol deodorant and went into cardiac arrest, sustaining irreparable brain damage.
“It was just the regular routine of going to hang out with her mates,” her mom Andrea, told Langdon in the interview. Her father Paul added, “We always knew where she was and we knew who she was with. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary…To get this phone call at that time of night, (it) was one of the calls no parent ever wants to have to receive, and we unfortunately got that call: ‘Come and get your daughter.’”
Langdon explains that Esra’s friends thought she was having a panic attack, “but after inhaling deodorant, her body was actually starting to shut down, she was in cardiac arrest and no one at the sleepover used cardiac arrest.”
Esra was being revived when Andrea arrived to her side, and the paramedics informed her mother that her daughter had been chroming, which she had never heard of before.
Esra was taken to hospital held onto the hope that their baby girl would recover. After all, her heart and lungs were strong so maybe she would make it through.
