Death an accidental drowning

A ‘‘fun-loving, adventurous’’ woman who drowned in South Marlborough was likely on acid at the time, a coroner has found.

Melissa Ewings, 31, was last seen nearly two years ago near her home in Clarence, 30 kilometres north of Kaiko¯ ura.

Her body has never been found. A coroner’s report, released this week, said Ewings died at the Clarence River mouth on September 20, 2020, and the cause of death was drowning.

‘‘It was an accident, occurring in the context of recent recreational drug use,’’ coroner Alexandra Cunninghame concluded.

The report described the days leading up to Ewings’ death, when she was ‘‘acting strangely’’ and friends and neighbours thought she was under the influence of drugs.

Ewings, who had moved to Clarence earlier that year, texted a picture of ‘‘black and white spiral designed squares of paper’’ to a friend on September 18, saying she had some acid in cardboard.

The coroner highlighted that a drugtesting team at a 2018 event in Nelson/ Marlborough had recorded ‘‘black on white Aztec spiral pattern’’ tabs as being ‘‘not LSD possibly NBOME’’.

The NZ Drug Foundation website advised that NBOME, a synthetic hallucinogenic drug, was similar to LSD but was much stronger.

It could cause hallucinations, distorted reality, euphoria, strong empathy, panic or nausea, and had been linked to many deaths overseas.

Two days later, the day Ewings disappeared, she messaged the same friend, asking, ‘‘Do you want to go to the beach today and take acid?’’ That was at 7.30am.

Shortly after 10am, Ewings arrived at her friend’s and told him he had to come to the beach. She said that a famous sportsperson was there. The friend wouldn’t go with her.

By 11am, Ewings was outside the house of her neighbour, where she asked him and his cousin whether they had seen her over in the paddock talking to the cows. She told them she was ‘‘really paranoid’’ the farmer would call the police after having seen her in the field, and told them she felt sick and had not been eating much lately, before she then left.

The pair said Ewings had seemed light-hearted and in a pretty good mood.

Ewings arrived the house of another man she knew in Clarence at 12.03pm, and told him she had been given a joint which she suspected had been spiked.

The man told police she had come across as someone who was high on drugs or had taken something and described her as ‘‘absolutely normal but apologetic’’.

The last person to see Ewings alive was likely a Clarence resident, who saw ‘‘little blue 4WD’’ driven by a young blonde woman, who had earlier introduced herself as ‘‘Melissa’’, head past her down a track to the Clarence River mouth at around 7pm.

Ewings failed to turn up for work the next day. Her dressing gown, cellphone and shoes were found on the beach near the river mouth in the days after her disappearance.

‘‘The narrative of Melissa’s last weekend satisfies me that she came into possession of a drug that she believed was LSD, but which may have been NBOME,’’ coroner Cunninghame said.

‘‘Over the night of [September] 19 or in the early morning of 20 September she took some or all of this substance.

‘‘Once at the beach area [that evening], she took off her shoes, before entering the water, either the river or the sea, where she drowned.

‘‘I am not satisfied that the use of drugs was an active cause of her death, although it is certainly very relevant to the circumstances in which she drowned.’’

The coroner said Ewings was a funloving, adventurous young woman, and extended her condolences to Ewings’ family and many friends.