Court: East London boy, 10, died after ingesting cocaine

The death of ten-year-old Isaac Mansfield, from Stratford, was attributed to natural causes until his GP, reviewing the records, spotted a hospital urine test had been positive for a metabolite of the Class A drug.

But by the time police and senior east London coroner Graeme Irvine began investigating, Isaac’s body had already been cremated.

Mr Irvine said he must now hold an inquest to try to determine who had exposed an “incredibly vulnerable” child to the lethal substance.

“I have to work on the basis that somebody must have done something to expose Isaac to cocaine,” he told East London Coroner’s Court on Monday, May 12.

He said he would have to look at everybody who had unsupervised access to Isaac in the 36 hours before his death, including his father, carers and staff at the John F Kennedy Special School.

A Metropolitan Police investigation failed to find evidence strong enough to criminally convict anybody.

“We don’t know how it was administered or if it was by a third party or inadvertently,” Det Sgt Jasmine Abbey told the court.

However, an inquest has a far lower burden of proof, allowing a coroner to make findings on “the balance of probabilities”.

Isaac, of Mirabelle Gardens, was rushed into Newham Hospital on September 6, 2023, after falling ill at school.

He was then transferred to St Mary’s paediatric intensive care unit in west London.

The cause of Isaac’s death on September 10, 2023, was originally given as organ failure, believed to be caused by an underlying metabolic disorder for which Isaac had received ongoing treatment.

But, the coroner said, staff at St Mary’s “can no longer credibly offer that as a cause of death in the light of the information relating to the toxicology".

“After the funeral occurred, it became clear, due to the sharp eyes of Isaac’s GP, that a toxicology test that had been undertaken at St Mary’s Hospital during the period of treatment prior to his death had shown a positive result for an illicit substance – cocaine,” said Mr Irvine.

“The period of time in which that cocaine had ended up in Isaac’s system was relatively short and during that period of time, Isaac had been exclusively in the east London area.”

After reviewing the evidence, specialist paediatric pathologist Dr Andreas Marnerides “has indicated that on the balance of probabilities, it is more likely than it is not that cocaine set into motion a series of issues that led to Isaac’s death,” Mr Irvine said.

The coroner told a representative of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust which runs St Mary’s that its staff could be ordered to court to be questioned.

He said he had recently learned “one of Isaac’s relatives occupies a senior position within the paediatric ICU at St Mary’s”, where Isaac was treated.

“It seems to me entirely feasible that questions could be put to witnesses within the body of the inquest about that familial relationship and whether or not that had any impact on treatment decisions or disclosure decisions,” he explained.

London Ambulance Service was also told it may be questioned.

It raised a safeguarding concern over “Isaac’s father’s seeming resistance to the idea of Isaac being taken to hospital from school” – but St Mary’s seemed to be unaware of it, the court heard.

Isaac’s father – not named in open court – failed to attend Monday’s hearing, at which Mr Irvine expressed his “disappointment”.

A planned final inquest on June 12 has now been postponed, in part because the “paucity of contact” with Isaac’s father has delayed disclosing evidence and finalising the witness list.

“I am going to have to hear from Isaac’s father and I am going to have to hear from the carers,” Mr Irvine said.

It was possible Isaac’s father had simply not understood the importance of Monday’s hearing, the coroner said, but if he and the carers failed to attend the next pre-inquest review, the court would look into “issuing warrants for their arrest – which I don’t want to do”.