A young Australian musician who died in a Hong Kong hotel had taken a lethal drug cocktail he bought from a doorman at a nearby nightclub, a report said yesterday.
Daniel Hall, 21, and fellow member of the Western Australian Youth Orchestra, Evan Williams, snorted a mixture of cocaine, ketamine and opiates in their room early on Dec. 19, the Sunday Morning Post reported.
The report said that the pair were believed to have bought the drugs from a nightclub doorman who gave them the impression they were buying only cocaine.
“Evan went into Dan’s room and we believe at some stage earlier the men bought some white powder that they snorted in the room,” Ben Burgess, the orchestra’s chief executive, told the newspaper.
“Toxicology [tests] revealed it was a bad batch that contained a number of illicit drugs that were considered quite pure ... a mix of cocaine, horse tranquilizer — ketamine. They did a test for opiates, there’s obviously heroin or morphine in some form within it as well,” he said.
The drugs, some of which were found by police in a package on a bedside table, left Hall dead and Williams fighting for his life in hospital.
Williams has since recovered and is now with his family in Perth, the report said.
A spokesman for the police refused to confirm the report.
“Preliminary findings of our post-mortem examination show there is no injury on the body of the deceased. We need to await the results of our further investigation to determine the cause of his death,” the spokesman said.
Hall, an oboe player, and Williams, a trombonist, had been on tour with the orchestra for a series of concerts in Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau.
The rest of the tour was canceled and all 75 musicians have returned to Perth, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
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