'I have nothing more to do,' suicide pact teenager told friend

TWO teenage girls made a suicide pact after one of them told the other she "had lived her life and had nothing more to do", an inquest in Donegal heard yesterday.

Fourteen-year-old Geraldine Chambers was found dead in a field last summer after preparing what appeared to be four suicide notes.

The inquest in Letterkenny heard how she took an overdose of morphine tablets along with vodka just a short distance from her home at Rossgier, Lifford. Her friend Alicia McGowan, now 15, also from Lifford, took an overdose but survived.

Ms McGowan told the inquest that a few days previously she and Geraldine had a conversation about taking an overdose. Geraldine had said that she "had lived her life and had nothing more to do". She had also asked Alicia to make her funeral arrangements. Alicia took iodine tablets from her home while Geraldine had taken morphine tablets from her house that belonged to her grandmother.

They drank the vodka and later at around 2am on Monday, July 15, 2002, they took the tablets. "We knew what we were going to do. We took a box of tablets. There were about 40 in each box. I swallowed about 40. I took some iodine tablets as well," she said.

Lucy Dineen, a social worker with the North Western Health Board, who had called to the Chambers' home that morning, went to the scene after Geraldine's brother, Colin, had found the two young girls. She said that Geraldine had no pulse, her neck was stiff and her face was cold.

When she first attended to Alicia, she could find no pulse. She gave her mouth to mouth resuscitation and felt her convulse. She telephoned the local garda station for assistance.

Det Garda Patrick Flynn told the inquest there were four letters written by Geraldine Chambers, to her mother, father, two brothers, and a friend.

"All four appeared to be suicide letters," he said.

There was also a letter from Alicia McGowan.

Geraldine's father, John Kelly of Meetinghouse Street, Stranorlar, said that he "was shocked. I read the notes, but I never thought she was thinking like this."

State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy, who carried out the post-mortem examination, said that the deceased had "taken several morphine tablets washed down with alcohol".

The jury of six returned a verdict in accordance with medical evidence that death was due to inhalation of vomit due to morphine intoxication.