Mum Chokes To Death After Stuffing Her Mouth With Several Jaffa Cakes During Food Challenge

A young woman has choked to death after trying to see how many Jaffa Cakes she could fit in her mouth for a party trick, reports Daily Star.

Beauty therapist Bethan Gaskin, 24, blacked out and stopped breathing when the snacks got lodged in her throat, as she desperately tried to spit them out.

 

The mum-of-one collapsed at home in Bourne, Lincolnshire, on February 22 and was rushed to hospital.

Tragically, she suffered a heart attack and died five days later at Peterborough City Hospital.

Today her devastated adoptive mum Michele, 52, warned other people of the dangers of food challenges.

She said: “I remember raising my eyebrows when Bethan started the game, thinking ‘how old are you?’ and telling her to spit them out.

“She was like a little hamster with her cheeks bulging.

“She danced off to the toilet to get rid of them and it was only a while later we realised she had been gone a long time.”

A short time later a friend went to check on Bethan and found her slumped on the bathroom floor.

Her desperate mum dialled 999 and one of her friends performed CPR while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

Michele said: “In my heart I knew we had lost her before they put her into the ambulance. Too much time was passing.”

Bethan was in hospital for five days before doctors realised the extent of the brain damage.

The family gathered at her bedside to say their goodbyes on February 27.

Michele sobbed: “She looked perfect and so beautiful. It was just like she was sleeping.

“So many people have said they play a similar game with marshmallows. Even my 90-year-old aunt said she does it with Maltesers.

“This just shows how fragile we are.”

The family also told of the heartbreaking moment they told Bethan’s three-year-old daughter Lili about her mum’s death.

Michele said: “I just told her that mummy was very sick and the doctors couldn’t make her better so she has died and we can’t see her again.”

Devastated dad Joe, 57, added: “We just tell her that mummy is an angel in heaven now.

“It was the hardest thing to have to answer all those questions when we had just said goodbye.”

Bethan donated her heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas and one of her lungs.

Joe and Michele adopted Bethan when she was six months old as well as her brother Joseph when he was born two years later.

Bethan had worked as a carer and was hoping to pursue a career in the beauty industry.

Source: Daily Star