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Barclay Crawford

John Carney

The young Australian musician who died in a Tsim Sha Tsui hotel last weekend had taken a deadly drug cocktail  bought  unknowingly from a doorman at  a nearby nightclub.
Daniel Hall and a friend, Evan Williams, snorted a mixture of cocaine, ketamine and opiates - probably heroin - in their room at the Kimberley Hotel last weekend, unaware of the risk they were taking.
The drugs, some of which were found by police in a package on a bedside table, left Hall dead and Williams fighting for his life in hospital. The pair, both 21, were taking part in  the Western Australian Youth Orchestra's first tour of the city. 
It is believed the pair  had  gone searching for the illegal stimulant Ecstasy in clubs near their hotel after returning from a harbour cruise at about 10pm.  They drank several beers in nightclubs before a doorman at a club believed to be in or around  Prat Avenue told them he could not get them Ecstasy but could provide them with cocaine.
After buying drugs from the doorman, they returned to their hotel and took them. They had no idea they were snorting anything other than cocaine.
 Ben Burgess, the orchestra's chief executive, confirmed the men had taken the lethal drug cocktail.
'Evan [Williams] went into Dan's room and we believe at some stage earlier the men bought some white powder that they snorted in the room. Toxicology [tests] revealed it was a bad batch that contained a number of illicit drugs that were considered quite pure ... a mix of cocaine, horse tranquilliser - ketamine. They did a test for opiates, there's obviously heroin or morphine in some form within it as well.'
The pair  were found in Hall's  room in the Kimberley Hotel, Kimberley Road, at 2.30am on December 19.  They were rushed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kowloon, where Hall was pronounced dead on arrival. 
Williams'  survival was fortuitous, coming only after the musician who was sharing Hall's room returned from an evening's shopping and sightseeing to find the door deadlocked from the inside.
After he failed to rouse  those inside the room, orchestra members contacted staff and asked them to open the door. 
'We managed to get in. Evan was face down in the bathroom, his airways were stuffed up with blood. Dan was on the bed,' Burgess said. 'Dan wasn't breathing and Evan was breathing very, very slightly.
'It was quite frantic, my poor staff member performed CPR unsuccessfully on Dan and then on Evan as well, and the ambulance came and took them both away.'
Williams was in a critical condition for three days, was twice in a coma and suffered heart and liver damage, but survived.  He left Hong Kong for Perth on Christmas Eve and is now back with his family. Williams, a trombonist,  Hall, who played the oboe, and their 73 fellow players were  scheduled to give  two concerts in Hong Kong after performing in Singapore. 
Following the double overdose, both concerts were cancelled, and distraught players flew home early. 
The Prat Avenue area is known as a source of illegal drugs. 
   
'There was a time when it was about the only place [in Hong Kong] you could score decent coke,' one reformed drug user said. 'But the trade really moved on once the local kids started cutting all sorts of rubbish into it. To give anyone this kind of mixture is the equivalent of murder.'
In February,  police arrested 37 suspected triad members, including a 15-year-old boy, and three women on suspicion of unlawful assembly and possession of offensive weapons after raiding a pub in Prat Avenue.  In August, police carried out an anti-vice operation in which 10 mainland women and three Hong Kong residents were arrested in a suspected brothel at 26 Prat Avenue. Police said they believed the premises were under the control of a triad society.
Hall is not the first  visitor to die after taking drugs in a city  considered one of the safest in the world. 
The most high-profile recent case involved  two American businessmen, who were found dead in a room at the five-star Grand Hyatt Hotel in Wan Chai in October 2007.  Paul Cherry, 45, and Cherry's uncle Richard Victore, 51,  died from an overdose of cocaine and heroin made more lethal by a high intake of alcohol. Government chemist Tam Wai-ming told an inquest  that  the pair had consumed a 'medium to great quantity' of heroin and cocaine.
In 2003, a senior Finnish police officer attending a conference died from a heart attack at the Island Shangri-La hotel after being given drugs. A prostitute suspected of involvement in his death was never found. 
Still, police say drug-related deaths are rare.
'The percentage of this type of crime happening is really low,'  Wan Chai district commander Blake Hancock said. 'Not to minimise the drug problem, but the largest problems we have are alcohol-related.
 'Thankfully, deaths from drugs in Hong Kong have been few and far between. There have been some high-profile instances like the deaths of the two businessmen a few years ago, but in general it is not a major problem.'



Musician killed by drug cocktail