Jeni Larmour was found dead hours after being dropped at university after being given ketamine

Right now Jeni Larmour should be knuckling down to her final year of studies in urban planning and architecture at Newcastle University, a course that is ‘not for the faint-hearted’ (the university’s words) but in which this brilliant four A* student was expected to excel.

Instead, Jeni, whose young life held so much promise, is buried in a cemetery in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, where there’s a golden butterfly etched on to her headstone.

Jeni did not attend so much as a single lecture in the course she had set her heart on studying after witnessing the ‘heartbreaking’ poverty in the slums of New Delhi on a school trip.

For, within hours of putting her groceries in the fridge at her student halls, this exceptional young woman, who was then 18 and a hardworking, accomplished classical singer, former deputy head girl at her sought-after grammar school and a colour sergeant in the Combined Cadets Force, was found lifeless in a flatmate’s room after taking a lethal combination of ketamine and alcohol on her first night at university. 

This week, at an inquest into her shocking death, Newcastle coroner Karen Dilks recorded a verdict of misadventure, ruling the ketamine was supplied to her by ‘another’.

Her mother Sandra sat through the two-day hearing desperately trying to stay strong for her beloved daughter.

It wasn’t easy, particularly hearing the evidence of her Newcastle flatmates describing how they’d found Jeni lying face down on the floor at 10pm but had left her and gone to bed. Then hearing how, at 5am, her flatmate, 18-year-old Kavir Kalliecharan, found her dead on his bedroom floor.

Jeni (pictured with her mother) was found lifeless in a flatmate’s room after taking a lethal combination of ketamine and alcohol on her first night at university

Jeni Larmour’s mother Sandra sat through a shocking two-day inquest into her daughter’s death this week

A Snapchap video was subsequently found on Jeni’s phone showing the pair in his room, with white powder on the table. ‘That was difficult to deal with,’ says Sandra. ‘How could they have left her there? They knew ketamine was involved. [We were told at the inquest] given the amount of the drug in her blood her body wouldn’t have reacted in that manner had she been more tolerant to it. The stark reality is, in my opinion, Jeni tried ketamine for the first time and died as a result.’

For her daughter, who was brought up with her younger brother Daniel in the sort of remote, rural part of Northern Ireland where distances are measured in fields rather than miles, was not, Sandra says, the sort of girl to ‘be running the streets at night’.

‘She wasn’t a city kid. She wasn’t even a town kid or a village kid, she was a country girl. One thing that sticks in my head is having lunch at a coffee shop with my sister-in-law and Jeni’s cousin before we left for Newcastle. She was like: “See you at Christmas.” She didn’t get to do that.

‘Then, as we were leaving, she got herself a blue slushy drink. That sticks in my head as well. The childishness of it. Her asking: “Can I have a slushy?” and then being catapulted into this world of drugs and drug taking.’

Jeni was one of four young people — three of whom were students — to die in Newcastle that freshers’ weekend two years ago. At the inquest Ms Dilks urged Newcastle University —which, this week, a Daily Mail investigation revealed was so desperate to appease the woke totalitarians that a senior lecturer claimed to have ‘decolonised’ her dentistry course —to ensure students read and understood guidance on what to do if someone became ill as a result of drugs and alcohol.

The inquest was told that, following that fateful weekend, the university vice-chancellor emailed students a ‘stark’ warning about the risk of drink and drugs, but was met with an ‘awful kick-back’. Lucy Backhurst, academic registrar and director of student services, said the general response was: ‘Who do you think you are telling us what to do?’ ‘It’s a balance,’ she added.

Which will be little comfort to parents throughout the country who entrust the welfare of their sons and daughters to our universities.

‘You’re sending children — they think they’re adults but they’re children — somewhere where there’s no adult supervision,’ says Sandra. ‘Maybe the universities could, particularly during freshers’ week, look at having a bit more adult presence.

‘There could be sweeps of rooms for drugs or ad-hoc searchings.’ She takes a deep breath as tears threaten. ‘But none of this is going to bring Jeni back.’

This is Sandra’s first in-depth interview since her daughter’s desperately sad death. She is an articulate 49-year-old with the sort of blonde good looks that, you suspect, would have allowed her to pass for a decade younger until grief dug deep lines into her brow.

Mother and daughter were particularly close, so much so that Sandra, who works as a human resources executive in a large manufacturing company, cannot contemplate the years ahead without her.

‘There’s no peace for a parent without their child,’ she says. ‘You know it’s been two years so far, but I’ve got ten years, 20 years, 30 years potentially and that’s going to be difficult.

‘I don’t want to live any longer but I have to be here for everybody else.

‘The other night — it wasn’t a dream — her voice came to me, saying: ‘Mummy, please help me.’ In my heart I believe those were her last words, her last thoughts.’

Jeni was, as her mother says, ‘super excited’ when they left Northern Ireland for Newcastle two years ago. Like so many teenagers brought up in rural areas, she yearned for the pulse of city life. ‘When we arrived at the halls of residence [on the Friday afternoon] there was a big green area in front of her room that had cows in it. It was a sort of town park. She was like, “Oh my goodness, I can’t even get away from the cows here.” ’

She was particularly looking forward to her first night out in Newcastle. ‘I left her at 4.40pm and by 7pm she was in difficulties. It was such a short time,’ says her truly broken mother.

‘As I walked away from the university [to go to her hotel], there was a group of students coming towards me laughing and having fun. I just thought to myself: “Jeni will really fit in here.”

Her mother believes that it was the first time that Jeni had taken ketamine but died as a result

‘But that night I had an uneasy feeling. Jeni and I would always text on a night out. I always got a response. That night I didn’t. I chided myself, saying: “Sandra, go to bed. There will be other nights she’ll be in Newcastle and you won’t be here. Just go to bed.” ’

When Jeni didn’t show up at the hotel the next morning, as arranged, Sandra was frantic. ‘I sent text messages. The first one was: “Where are you?” The last one was: “Are you alive?” That was a running joke between us after she’d had a night out. She’d come back with “barely”. But there was no response.

‘At around 10.30am the police phoned me. They wanted to clarify I was Jeni’s mum and said they needed to come and talk to me.

‘I picked up my coat and handbag and set them on the bed next to me and I said out loud: “Jeni, whatever it is you’ve done we’ll get through this.”

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‘But in my heart of hearts I knew the police don’t come to somebody’s room to have a conversation about a misdemeanour and Jeni wasn’t a misdemeanour person. Something told me it was too late.

‘When two officers eventually knocked on the door, I just said: “Please don’t tell me. Please don’t.” They told me she’d been found and had passed away.

‘I can’t even remember whether they told me it was drugs at that stage. They must have because I don’t remember a point of not knowing it was drugs and suddenly hearing it, but I honestly can’t remember.

‘I do remember running towards the toilet at one stage to be sick. I just retched.’

The police contacted Jeni’s father David, who is divorced from Sandra but remains supportive.

‘He had to come over by boat and then drive right across England, so it wasn’t until 4pm he and Daniel arrived.’ While she waited for them she phoned her own mother to break the terrible news: ‘I said, “Mum, there’s something bad and you need to sit down. Jeni’s not coming home. There’s been an incident and she’s dead. She’s dead.” ’

The weekend passed, Sandra says, ‘in a blur’. She didn’t really sleep. ‘This numbness set in. It was like you were getting information but getting it at face value and it wasn’t going any deeper.’

On the Monday she and David went to identify their daughter’s body. ‘David was the tearful one. I was the one who chose to identify her and sign. I’d set my emotions aside.

Jeni did not attend so much as a single lecture in the course she had set her heart on studying after witnessing the ‘heartbreaking’ poverty in the slums of New Delhi on a school trip

‘We were taken to a side room in the hospital. Jeni was in bed. She had the covers pulled up to her chest. She looked relatively well. I think we spent half an hour with her.

‘I just remember stroking her hand and saying: “Jeni, I will sort this out. I’ll be making sure your eyebrows are done.”

‘She’d talk about her eyebrows and I promised her she’d look glamorous in her coffin. I think I was still in shock. I was still numb.’

She eventually put diamond earrings in her daughter’s ears when the body was released and returned to their home in Co Armagh nine days later.

Rihanna’s Diamonds was her and her daughter’s song. ‘We often sang it at the top of our voices over and over, especially in the car — Jeni with her beautiful voice and me botching it up with my tone-deaf drone,’ says Sandra. Today, ‘Shine like a diamond’ is written on her headstone.

Given the Covid restrictions in place at the time, numbers at the funeral, that took place two weeks to the day of her tragic death, were restricted — but hundreds of people lined the 13 miles of road from her home to the cemetery and the shop shutters along the way were down, such was the fondness for Jeni.

‘I can’t remember much, I was still in a state of shock and, at that stage, we believed in the justice system and that somebody would be held responsible for supplying her.’

Sandra now knew that her daughter had returned to the university halls with flatmate Kavir Kalliecharan to collect her ID, which she’d forgotten. Together, they took ketamine in his room

Sandra now knew that her daughter had returned to the university halls with flatmate Kavir Kalliecharan to collect her ID, which she’d forgotten. Together, they took ketamine in his room.

When police were called after her lifeless body was found at 5am, sniffer dogs discovered weighing scales, zip-lock bags, a vapouriser, cannabis grinder and three types of drug — ketamine, cannabis and MDMA — in his room.

The son of an associate professor in health policy at Leeds University, he was arrested and led from the block in handcuffs. Sandra thought they’d throw the book at him.

But, as his trial approached last year, she learned he was pleading guilty to three counts of possession. He was not charged with supplying ketamine to Jeni or manslaughter. Instead, Sandra heard on a video link to his trial, he was accusing Jeni of providing the ketamine.

‘I texted the tech guy from the court, saying: “I need to speak to the judge. He’s telling lies.” Jeni and I had flown to Newcastle with only hand luggage. We’d couriered the rest of her bags but they’d been delayed, so hadn’t arrived.

‘I know my daughter. She’d have had to be a very streetwise girl to have scored drugs in that period of time. I knew it wasn’t true. I knew she wasn’t a drug person.’

Magistrates gave Kalliecharan a two-year conditional discharge in June last year and he was ordered to pay £85 costs and a paltry £21 victim surcharge.

Sandra was furious. She has fought tooth and nail since to clear her daughter’s name. The coroner’s ruling this week that the ketamine had been supplied by ‘another’ was a victory of sorts.

‘That’s what we needed and we can go from here,’ she says. ‘Jeni’s my baby. We were a team. If she was sitting here with me now and someone said one of the two of you will have to die, I’d say “take me”.

‘She went into this as a laughing, happy student. She had a few drinks and there’s no crime in that. Somebody pushed drugs in front of her and suggested: “Let’s do this.” Her mental capacity was impaired. Whether she did or didn’t willingly get involved, I will never know the answer to that, but I will fight for her reputation and I will get justice.’

Jeni, whose young life held so much promise, is buried in a cemetery in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, where there’s a golden butterfly etched on to her headstone

Meanwhile, Jeni’s bedroom in this remote part of Northern Ireland remains much as it was when as a ‘super-excited’ 18-year-old she left here expecting to return at Christmas, but she never came home.

‘There’s lots and lots of whys and what-ifs,’ says Sandra. ‘What if she hadn’t gone to that university? What if she’d been in a different halls? What if at five to ten at night, instead of me staying in the hotel room I’d actually walked the streets of Newcastle to be with her? What if . . . what if.’

Sandra has been trying her hardest to hold herself together throughout this deeply moving interview. Now the tears fall.

‘Jeni’s birthday is May 13 — three days before mine — so my birthday was always overshadowed. Her 21st was coming up next year, which is also my 50th.

‘I speak to her very morning. I speak to her every night. I feel her presence with me but she should be overshadowing me on my birthday. She should.’