Jenna Vickers
Jenna (with boyfriend Bryan Watson) had been taking unregulated injections of 'melanotan', a synthetic hormone which encourages the production of melanin, the pigment which turns the skin brown when exposed to sunlight
Jenna Vickers (with mother Shirley Mather) collapsed and died in a tanning salon after undergoing tanning injections
Ms Vickers collapsed inside a cubicle at the tanning shop after injecting unlicensed tanning products
*Jenna Vickers, 26, had injected hormone melanotan night before she died- *Encourages the production of pigment which turns the skin brown
- *Miss Vickers was 'obsessed' with having a tan and regularly used sunbeds
- *Was found collapsed in cubicle of her local tanning salon by staff
- *Had complained of headaches shortly before she died, her fiance said
Weeks before, she had tweeted: 'Getting a lovely tan now ... And I've had no side effects :) Very happy Bunny.' Miss Vickers had gone for her regular sunbed session at the Tantastic salon near her home in Bolton, Greater Manchester, when she was found collapsed in September last year.
A bride-to-be who collapsed and died while at sunbed salon had been taking banned tanning drugs, an inquest has heard.
Jenna Vickers, 26, collapsed inside a cubicle at the tanning shop the night after injecting the drugs.
A hearing into her death in Bolton was told that fair-skinned Miss Vickers was 'obsessed' with having a tan and was a regular at a tanning salon.
Miss Vickers had been taking unregulated injections of 'melanotan', a synthetic hormone which encourages the production of melanin, the pigment which turns the skin brown when exposed to sunlight.
She was taken to hospital but died shortly after.
Today her mother, Shirley Mather, told the 11-strong jury hearing the inquest that her daughter was a bright and bubbly person and generally happy but she had struggled with her weight.
She had dieted occasionally and put weight on in the period before her death, when she weighed around 25 stones.
Mrs Mather said: 'I was always worried about her weight. She would go on a diet and lose quite a bit and then put it back on. She weighed around 18 stone. She wasn’t taking diet pills and want on a diet at the time of her death.
'She was very fair skinned and really keen to get a tan, she used to go through phases.
'I used to drop her off at the sunbeds and wait outside for her. She probably went on twice a week.
'I was always telling her not to go on but she wouldn’t listen. She had probably been going on for about three months, twice a week. It didn’t really give her a tan.'
'I was waiting for about 30 minutes. She went in about 9.35am or 9.40am. At 10.13am I phoned her to ask whether she had fallen asleep.'
She said when she walked in to the salon, she knew something wasn't right.
Salon manager Lisa Rourke had become concerned 10 minutes after the 12-minute tanning session had stopped and had tried to get into the booth, but Miss Vickers had collapsed against the door having got out of the upright tanning bed.
Mrs Mather said: 'I ran in and saw her slumped on the floor. I just knew something was wrong.
'I opened the cubicle door, Jenna was on the floor. I shouted her name and I saw her lips were all purple.
'I was shouting "come on Jenna, come on". I just couldn’t get her round. I tried to get her out of the cubicle door but I just couldn’t manage it at all.
'They (paramedics) got her out on a stretcher working on her for half an hour then that’s when they came out and told me. I didn’t see her breathing at all.'
Miss Vickers' fiance, Brian Watson, confirmed she had never fainted whilst with him, but had complained of frequent headaches.
He said: 'She was jealous because I could get a tan and she couldn’t. She had bought a couple of viles in the past couple of months. She would inject every two or three days.
'The night before, I had finished work and got home. We would normally take the dogs out and have tea and then settle down to watch TV.
'It was a normal evening. She would normally do it (inject) before she went to bed.
'That night she complained about having a pain in her chest but that was before the injections. It must have been between 7.30 pm and 9pm. She was sitting on the couch and she just grabbed her chest and said "ow".
'She said she had a pain and I asked if I needed to call paramedics, but she said no, she would be fine and it was gone in 10 minutes. I thought it was indigestion. The pain must have been quite bad.
'She kept them in the fridge and would take them out half an hour before. I had taken one and they sting. She would say it was stinging her.'
Graham Olive, a health and safety inspector for Bolton Council, said he had checked the 48-tube stand-up tanning cabinet and found it was in good working order with no faults.
He said customers buying multiple sessions at Tantastic were given a card asking about skin type and recording their exposure to sunbeds.
But Miss Wilson-Vickers bought her sessions individually so did not have the same card and there were no records kept at the shop showing her being asked about her use or medication she was taking.
Mr Olive said she may have been asked about this verbally but it was not recorded.
Dwayne Rutty, a forensic analyst with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said after Miss Wilson-Vickers' death he had been asked to analyse two substances recovered during the police investigation into the matter, one in solid and one in liquid form, and both were found to be Melanotan 2.
'It is thought to have tanning qualities, we have seen it before, the agencies are quite aware of people using it for tanning,' he said.
The inquest heard Melanotan 1 and 2 were both classified by the agency as unlicensed medicinal products and are banned in the UK from being sold or supplied.
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