An East Ham man was killed by accidentally mixing his prescribed painkillers with alcohol after years of “chronic” back pain, a court has heard.
Electrician Lalji Kanji Vekaria, 49, of St Stephen’s Road, was found unresponsive at an address in nearby Park Avenue on October 4, 2024.
Paramedics spent almost an hour trying to resuscitate him but eventually declared him dead.
A pathologist has attributed his death to the combined effects of alcohol and two prescription drugs.
“It is likely that the ingested substances combined to cause a fatal respiratory depression,” coroner Nadia Persaud told an inquest at East London Coroner’s Court on Tuesday, June 17.
She ruled his death an accident, telling the court: “There is no evidence that Mr Vekaria would have taken the substances with an intention to end his life.”
One of his sisters described Mr Vekaria, born in Forest Gate, to Mrs Persaud as “outgoing, friendly, very loving and sociable… always happy to help others".
He had long suffered “intense back pain”, she said, but when they spoke on WhatsApp the day before he died, “there was nothing in that conversation that gave me cause for concern... he didn’t mention that he was feeling unwell or anything like that.”
GP records supplied by Plashet Harmony Practice in East Ham showed Mr Vekaria had suffered a spinal injury and undergone “multiple operations and procedures without much relief to the symptoms”.
“He needed strong analgesia, including controlled drugs,” the surgery wrote. It prescribed him two painkillers: oxycodone and pregabalin.
The inquest heard that on October 4, Mr Vekaria and a friend were painting a residential address in Park Avenue.
After they ate dinner and drank some alcohol, he began to experience back pain, went to lay down and fell asleep.
When his friend noticed he had stopped snoring, he went to check on Mr Vekaria and found him not breathing.
An autopsy found no evidence of any natural cause of death.
But toxicology tests showed Mr Vekaria was around twice the drink-drive limit and had also consumed his two prescribed painkillers.
The pregabalin was at a therapeutic level, but the level of oxycodone could not be determined.
“In the absence of any underlying natural disease identified, I believe this is reflective of the likely cause of death, even if the quantity of oxycodone cannot be determined,” the pathologist’s report concluded.
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