Lee Brand
A millionaire's son died in agony after cocaine-filled pellets he tried to smuggle into Britain exploded in his stomach causing a massive seizure.
Drugs mule Lee Brand, 33, became the first Briton to die attempting to carry cocaine inside him from Jamaica.
Brand, who was posing as a wildlife enthusiast, swallowed six thumbsized plastic containers of the drug in Negril, Jamaica, hours before his plane was due to take off for London.
But he did not make it to the airport after at least two of the crudelymade pellets burst inside him - causing his body temperature to soar and ending in a cardiac arrest.
Brand - whose dad Terry killed himself 11 years ago by flying a plane into the sea off Bournemouth - fell violently ill in the luxury Xtabi hotel resort at 7am last Sunday.
He told his male room-mate he had swallowed vast amounts of cocaine, and he needed to get to hospital immediately as the phials had broken open inside his stomach.
His pal threw him into a car and raced him to hospital.
But, during the half-hour journey to casualty at Savanna La Mar, Brand's condition deteriorated as the drugs took hold and his body temperature soared out of control.
He died in the car while his friend desperately fought to save him.
Medics at the hospital could do nothing to revive him. A pathologist removed pellets from Brand's stomach during a post mortem in a hospital morgue in Montego Bay on Tuesday, and his body was flown home to England on Thursday. Toxicology tests are expected to reveal he died from a catastrophic intake of cocaine causing heart seizure.
Police on the Caribbean island - where the drugs trade is controlled by violent Yardie and South American gangs - are trying to find out who supplied Brand with cocaine.
Thousands of Jamaican drug mules used to flood Britain - although deaths were rare - until visa rules were tightened. Then drug gangs started to target British and European tourists who attracted less suspicion.
Brand, a frequent visitor to Jamaica, was on a break from his job at B.J. Herp reptile centre in his home town of Dorchester, Dorset, where Sir David Attenborough filmed earlier this year.
Police believe he was trying to smuggle as much as half a kilo of the Class A drug. Cocaine is much cheaper in the Caribbean and can fetch up to £40,000 a kilo on Britain's streets.
A Jamaican detective said: "When a pellet bursts - that's it, you are dead. This man must have suffered a huge shock to the system.
"Mules swallow up to half a kilo wrapped with something to stop them being digested. In this case the pellets burst or leaked and the cocaine was instantly absorbed in the stomach. It would have gone through the whole body and hit the heart - bang! I've never known anyone survive this.
"We are trying to find out if Mr Brand was part of an organised crime syndicate using him as a mule."
Another officer said: "This is the first case of a British man dying in this way." Police are searching remote west coast areas for a dreadlocked "Rasta man" who may have befriended Brand. Hotel manager David Pebles said: "Mr Brand's friend told me that he got up in the early hours to find a note from Mr Brand saying he would be back later. But when he returned he was feverish. .
"When someone gets that sick just before a flight you suspect they've taken something that's backfired."
Another hotel employee said: "He was a happy-go-lucky guy. He said he worked with animals in England and that he loved the wildlife here."
Negril police chief Cyril Brissett said: "People need to know about the danger - it can easily result in death."
In March 2000 Brand admitted stealing £4,111 his father left to someone else in his will, and received a six-month suspended jail sentence.
'He was feverish and violently ill'
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