A hotel room in Egypt where a British couple stayed before suddenly falling ill and dying was next door to a room fumigated with chemicals to kill bedbugs hours before, an inquest has heard.
John Cooper, 69, and his wife, Susan, 63, died after becoming ill while staying at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, Blackburn coroner’s court heard.
A preliminary expert report at an earlier hearing suggested neither carbon monoxide poisoning nor food poisoning caused the couple’s deaths on 21 August 2018, but cited possible exposure to an “infectious biological agent or toxic chemicals”.
On the first day of the two-day inquest hearing, a statement from a German tourist said he reported a bedbug infestation in the room next door to the Coopers.
It was then treated with the pesticide, referred to as Lambda, at lunchtime. The Coopers fell ill in the early hours and died the next day.
The two rooms had an adjoining door but this was kept locked.
Kelly Ormerod, the couple’s daughter, described her parents, from Burnley, Lancashire, as healthy for their age who had been enjoying a “brilliant” holiday with her, their three grandchildren and family friends.
Cooper, a builder, and his wife, a cashier at a bureau de change, went with their friends and family to the hotel restaurant and a bar on 20 August, before retiring for the evening.
Ormerod’s daughter, Molly, then aged 12, was staying on a single bed in her grandparents’ room, which she said had a “yeasty smell”.
At 1am John Cooper rang to say Molly was feeling a little unwell and he escorted his granddaughter to her mother’s room on the upper floor.
The next morning, the Coopers failed to emerge for breakfast. Ormerod went to their ground floor room to discover the pair were seriously ill.
Ormerod said her father came to the door saying: “I really don’t feel very well,” and was retching and screwing his face up.
“He just literally slumped and sat on the corner of the bed and said: ‘I’m really not well’,” Ormerod told the hearing.
She said her mother was in bed, “groaning” with vomit in her hair and around the room, where she noticed a strange “heavy” smell.
Two doctors were summoned but they were in “panic mode”, Ormerod said, as her parents further deteriorated and her father struggled to breathe.
Tearfully, Ormerod added: “His eyes kind of … a glazed, staring look.”
CPR was attempted but John Cooper was declared dead on the hotel room floor and his wife was taken to a clinic at the hotel where she became “super agitated” and delirious, the inquest heard.
Susan Cooper was taken to hospital by ambulance but was declared dead at 4.12pm.
A statement was read from Dominik Bibi, a lorry dispatcher from Germany, who had arrived at the hotel with seven family members in the early hours of 20 August.
Bibi said of the room assigned to his mother-in-law: “On entering I immediately noticed a funny smell, like that of mould or damp.
“There was a lot of bedbugs in the bed and under it.”
He said a cleaner and night manager came and apologised and his mother-in-law took his and his wife’s room, further down the corridor.
Bibi said he was outside his mother-in-law’s room later when he saw three men, two wearing the hotel uniform and the other with a two or three litre pesticide canister he assumed was being used to kill the bedbugs.
After five or 10 minutes they left the room and used masking tape to tape up around the door and seal the room.
“I would not say the job was very professional,” Bibi’s statement added.
The hearing was adjourned until Wednesday morning.
