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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Pear-D death isolated case, say UK cops

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Tests done by the Hamp­shire Con­stab­u­lary have con­firmed that the co­caine-laced bot­tle of Pear-D linked to a death in Eng­land was not ex­port­ed to the UK by lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er SM Jaleel & Co Ltd.The Hamp­shire po­lice, in a re­lease on their Web site, said tests on the tox­ic bot­tle had "now es­tab­lished that the bot­tle of Cole Cold Pear-D fruit drink was man­u­fac­tured in the Caribbean and the com­pa­ny did not ex­port this drink to the UK."

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the po­lice re­ceived lab­o­ra­to­ry test re­sults which showed the bot­tle con­tained a lethal amount of co­caine.On Thurs­day, the UK Food Stan­dards Agency (FSA) is­sued a re­call of Cole Cold Pear-D.Af­ter the UK alert, SM Jaleel, of Ota­heite, vol­un­tar­i­ly re­called the drink from the batch con­tain­ing the best-be­fore code, "BB JAN 08 14," as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure.

Roy­al Navy vet­er­an Joromie Lewis died on De­cem­ber 5 af­ter drink­ing from the bot­tle. Lewis, 33, of Gosport, orig­i­nal­ly from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, drank the co­caine-laced Pear-D and died with­in hours at Southamp­ton Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.Yes­ter­day, calls to Po­lice Crime Com­mis­sion­er for Hamp­shire Si­mon Hayes and his press of­fi­cer Su­san Rolling for a com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion went unan­swered.

The con­stab­u­lary re­lease al­so said a mul­ti-agency task­force, head­ed by De­tec­tive Supt Richard Pear­son, has been set up to in­ves­ti­gate how the co­caine-laced drink made it in­to the UK. The po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been named Op­er­a­tion Crab.Lewis's death has been wide­ly re­port­ed across the Unit­ed King­dom. Ma­jor news­pa­pers, in­clud­ing the Dai­ly Mail and the UK Guardian, high­light­ed Lewis's death and the FSA's alert.

Spiked bot­tle an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent

Pear­son was re­port­ed in the UK me­dia as say­ing, "En­quiries to date have not iden­ti­fied any fur­ther in­ci­dents or sim­i­lar bot­tles. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion sug­gests that this was like­ly to be a rogue bot­tle from a con­sign­ment of drugs stored in plas­tic juice bot­tles."Yes­ter­day, an FSA spokesman at the FSA head­quar­ters in Lon­don, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian by tele­phone, al­so said, "At this stage it would ap­pear to be an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent."

The spokesman, who de­clined to have his name pub­lished, said the alert was is­sued on Thurs­day af­ter the Hamp­shire po­lice no­ti­fied the FSA f of Lewis's death. To date, he said, no more bot­tles of the Pear-Drink had been seized.The spokesman said the FSA does not be­lieve the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed drink was wide­ly avail­able, since there have been no oth­er cas­es."We do not have ev­i­dence that there has been wide dis­tri­b­u­tion in the UK or (Southamp­ton). We do not have any ev­i­dence of any fur­ther dis­tri­b­u­tion at the mo­ment.

"So re­al­ly, it was a case of putting an alert out so our lo­cal au­thor­i­ty en­force­ment of­fi­cers just can check re­tail­ers," he said.The spokesman said all in­for­ma­tion on the re­call was re­leased in its alert on Thurs­day and was the most up-to-date in­for­ma­tion.


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