Parents forced to pull plug on daughter following sleepover horror

Ally Langdon of Australia couldn’t conceal the anguish she felt within as she met with a mother and father who were forced to make the difficult decision to end the life of their 13-year-old daughter.

The young girl died as a result of a viral fad known as chroming, and Langdon, a mother, battled to hold back her emotions.

Appearing on A Current Affair with host Ally Langdon, Andrea and Paul Haynes revealed their tale of how their 13-year-old daughter Esra Haynes died after following a social media craze called chroming, that involves breathing poisonous chemicals via the mouth or nose to become euphoric.

As a young athlete, Esra competed in BMX bike races alongside her brothers and guided her team to a national aerobics championship in Queensland. The Montrose Football Netball Club, where she co-captained, described her as “determined, fun, cheeky, and talented.”

During a stay at a friend’s house on March 31, Esra sniffed a can of spray deodorant for a deadly high and suffered irreversible brain damage after going into cardiac arrest.

According to her mother Andrea, “it was just the regular routine of going to hang out with her mates,” Langdon said.

Her father, Paul, explained, “We always knew where she was and who she was with.  The situation was not unusual. To get this phone call at that time of night, (it) was one of the calls no parent ever wants to have, and we regrettably received the call: ‘Come and collect your daughter.'”

Langdon notes that Esra’s companions assumed she was having a panic attack, “but after inhaling deodorant, her body was actually starting to shut down, she was in cardiac arrest, and no one at the sleepover used cardiac arrest.”

When Andrea arrived at Esra’s side, paramedics were attempting to resuscitate her and informed her that her daughter had been chroming, something she had never heard of before to that point.

Esra was rushed to the hospital, with the hope that their newborn girl would recover.  After all, her heart and lungs were robust, so perhaps she might make it through.

After eight days on life support, Paul and Andrea were informed that Esra’s brain had been injured “beyond repair,” and they had to make the decision to switch off the machine.

Her parents struggled with their words and relived their darkest day as they described the sorrow of taking their daughter’s life.

When asked to invite relatives and friends to the hospital for their final goodbyes, Esra’s father said, “It was a very, very tough thing to do to such a young soul. She was placed on a bed so we could lie with her.  “We cuddled her till the end.”

Langdon, a mother of two small children, was overwhelmed by the parents’ grief and burst into tears.

The bereaved siblings of a Year 8 girl who died from chroming believe their purpose is now to prevent others from suffering the same fate. Esra Haynes, a Don Valley adolescent, had cardiac arrest after inhaling deodorant. #9News | WATCH LIVE 6PM

Published by 9 News on Wednesday, April 12, 2023.

Esra died in early April, and Paul claims the family is absolutely “broken,” with Esra’s siblings, Imogen, Seth, and Charlie, being “shattered.”

“It was really devastating, devastating for everyone involved, all her friends as well,” Paul told me.  “It’s been the most terrible, horrific experience any parent could have.  We haven’t been sleeping, eating, or smiling—we’re not ourselves… But it has touched not just us, but also the community.”

Paul and his wife, who had never heard of chroming before it murdered their daughter, are on a mission to raise awareness about the fatal viral craze easily performed with store-bought materials like deodorant, paint, chair-spray or even permanent markers–that is becoming increasingly popular among teenagers.

Speaking to a local news station, Paul expressed his desire that he had been aware about chroming during the time Esra was still alive in order to have alerted her to the risks:  “We would have definitely had the conversation around our kitchen table if we had been informed and the word had gotten out.”

“In order to give these kids the best advice right away, we need to step it up and let them learn the information directly from the source—not through friends or social media.”

Paul intends to educate parents so that they can educate their kids and, ideally, save their lives and their children.

“(Parents) should sit down and talk to their children, starting the conversation softly.  “We didn’t know what was going on.”

Since 2009, the disturbing practice of chroming has caused the deaths of several youngsters in Australia and throughout the world.

Chroming, which may cause seizures, heart attacks, asphyxia, abrupt smelling death, coma, and organ failure, is appealing to young people because it provides an instant short-term high.

“We’ve got the pictures in our mind which will never be vanished you know, of what we were confronted with,” says Paul to Langdon.  “Our gut was ripped out.”

We can’t image how difficult it is for a family to make the decision to take their young kid off life support.  Our hearts go out to the Haynes family and all the loved ones Esra has left behind.

Share this story with everyone you know, and help parents save their children’s lives by teaching them about the risks of this deadly trend.