Coronation Street actor said he was ‘getting on it like mad’ before death
An inquest was told that Joseph Wandera, 27, died after taking a cocktail of ecstasy and ketamine while at a dance music festival in Costa Rica
A budding actor, tragically collapsed and died after combining ecstasy and ketamine during a dance festival visit to Costa Rica, an inquest has been informed. Joseph, hailing from Salford, succumbed to a fatal seizure just one week into his vacation.
Despite valiant life-saving efforts, he passed away in an apartment at the Tamarindo beach resort where he was participating in the BPM music festival in January 2022. His bereaved mother, Claire Beatson, voiced her shock in Rochdale Coroners’ Court on Tuesday, September 18 upon learning about the narcotics her son had indulged in whilst abroad.
The inquest revealed that Joseph had ingested ‘Magic’, an ecstasy variant classified as class A, and had confessed to his girlfriend that he had also partaken of an obscure mixture of drugs known as ‘Pink Stuff’. The day prior to his passing, a telling text to his girlfriend in England, Alison Maloney, depicted him as ‘getting on it like mad’ with the consumption of some ‘pink stuff’.
On the ill-fated morning of his death on January 16, Joseph sent a distressed text admitting: “Not gonna lie, I don’t know what was in the f***ing thing that I f***ing took. I can only type with my left hand and now I can’t see out of my left eye.”
He went on to disclose that he had been continuously vomiting and had endured insomnia for two days. Within her witness statement to the court, Renay Zollner, who first encountered Joseph in Marbella and subsequently became good friends enjoying Manchester’s nightlife together, testified that she too had journeyed to Costa Rica for the very same festival alongside Joe’s acquaintances, reports the Manchester Evening News..
Ms Zollner recalled that Joseph appeared ‘tired’ with bags under his eyes en route to Central America but seemed ‘otherwise healthy’. She mentioned that the men stayed in a villa while she resided in an apartment.
She noted Joseph had been taking a form of MDMA known as ‘Magic’, although she was uncertain of the quantity. She pointed out that ‘everyone’ had been acquiring Magic from local dealers.
The witness observed that Joseph hadn’t consumed any alcohol in her presence, but he had tried a drug called ‘Pink Stuff’, which she witnessed him snorting as a pink powder, ‘a few days’ before his passing. Ms Zollner recounted that after a night out, about a week into their holiday, she dozed off around 3am on January 16 on her apartment sofa when she received a WhatsApp message from Joseph asking for a lift.
Even though feeling ‘annoyed’, she agreed and drove for about 50 minutes to a forest by the coast, based on the location Joseph had sent her. Upon finding him, she noticed the bags under his eyes, which she deemed ‘normal’.
“All of us were sleep deprived because of all the partying, drinking and drugs,” she admitted. Since Joseph couldn’t guide her to his villa, she returned to her apartment where she declined his request to sleep on the sofa and instructed him to sleep in a bed instead. She covered him with a blanket, she added.
Ms Zollner recalled that Joseph was ‘not hot or sweaty’ before she retired for the night. She was awakened at 7.15am by Fidel, another boy who had stayed over, alerting her that Joseph was ‘fitting on the floor’. She instructed him to place Joseph in the recovery position. Five minutes later, a panicked Fidel called for her.
Upon finding Joseph on the floor, Ms Zollner noted that she couldn’t find a pulse but detected faint breathing. The ambulance service was promptly called and they were advised to ‘start CPR’, with Fidel performing chest compressions. However, when paramedics arrived, they declared ‘nothing more could be done’, as per Ms Zollner’s account.
Joseph was remembered as a ‘humorous, kind young man who enjoyed entertaining people and loved life’, according to his mother, Ms Beatson. She shared with the inquest that Joseph grew up in Salford and Prestwich and pursued studies in performing arts. He held jobs at JD Sports and Greggs after his studies and was signed up by an acting agency where he also worked as an administrator. His love for performing arts was evident, she added.
His mother also revealed that Joseph was a ‘huge’ Manchester United fan, following the team both home and away. He was a social drinker and a regular attendee of Manchester’s Parklife music festival, the court heard. Ms Beatson revealed that her son had smoked cannabis in his younger years and ‘occasionally’ dabbled with ecstasy, but she insisted that drug-taking ‘wasn’t something that was his usual behaviour’. She confessed to being ‘shocked’ upon discovering what her son had ingested in Costa Rica as ‘he’s never taken anything like this before’.
Her son was a keen traveller and had previously visited Thailand with his ‘acting friends’. Speaking about her son, she said: “He was a humorous, kind young man who enjoyed entertaining people and loved life.” Ms Beatson learned from her son that he had planned a two-week holiday to Costa Rica, departing from London Heathrow on January 10, 2022. During his trip, he sent her several photos and a few text messages.
In his final message, sent on the afternoon of January 15, he mentioned attending a party and conveyed that he was ‘having a good time’. The news of her son’s death was relayed to her by his girlfriend, the court heard.
The inquest was informed that Joseph had been seriously assaulted in Manchester city centre at 1am on December 16, 2019, when he was attacked by ‘a group of unknown people’. He was rushed to Manchester Royal Infirmary with broken vertebrae in his back, lacerations requiring staples, and bruising.
He was discharged eleven days later. However, Joseph only reported the incident to the police 18 days post-attack, and due to the delay, detectives were unable to find any CCTV footage, the inquest heard.
Ms Beatson recounted to the inquest that after her son was assaulted, he experienced a ‘tingling’ sensation down one arm and sought help from a private physiotherapist.
Following Joseph’s repatriation with his partial, embalmed remains, forensic pathologist Dr Charles Wilson performed a post-mortem examination. He discovered a spinal fracture but deemed it ‘unlikely this would have caused or contributed to the death’.
Dr Wilson faced limitations due to insufficient material for a UK toxicological analysis, relying on a ‘fairly scant’ report from Costa Rica, which indicated ketamine and MDMA presence in Joseph’s blood but did not specify drug concentrations.
The pathologist noted the combined effect of these drugs ‘can be more profound’. Detective Inspector Mark Astbury reported difficulties in contacting Joseph’s friends from the trip, with one untraceable and another having ‘passed away’.
Nonetheless, he found no suspicious circumstances, concluding Joseph had voluntarily ingested the substances.
