Energy drinks kill, a heartbroken mother has said, issuing a warning about what she believes killed her 16-year-old daughter.
Kris Hamman, of Arizona, says her daughter Lanna had been on holiday in Mexico with her friends and their parents when the tragedy occurred.
She told an Arizona-based media outfit, KPHO that Lanna’s friends told her that she had been on the beach consuming energy drinks but not drinking water before she had a fatal heart attack.
That night she complained about not feeling well an then went into cardiac arrest and died.
“Obviously, this is something that could have happened anywhere, whether she was in Mexico or whether she was here in Arizona playing softball,” Mrs Hamann said.
“(Parents should) make sure they’re watching their kids. (Watch) what they’re drinking and (make sure) they’re drinking water instead of an energy drink.”
To make matters worse Mexico has refused to release Lanna’s body because of a complication on the girl’s birth certificate.
Family and friends have launched a GoFundMe.com page to raise the $13,000 needed to bring her body home.
Lanna’s parents travelled to Mexico overnight to retrieve their daughter’s body.
The US Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation into five deaths linked to energy drinks in 2012.
It came after a Maryland family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit claiming that their 14-year-old daughter died of a heart attack after consuming two Monster Energy drinks within the space of 24 hours.
It is unclear what brand of energy drink Lanna had been consuming the day she died.
