A 32-year-old woman from Australia died alone in her bathroom after consuming a lethal dose of caffeine and waiting seven hours for emergency help that never came in time.
Christina Lackmann made a desperate call to emergency services at 7:49 p.m. in April 2021, saying she couldn’t get off the floor and felt dizzy, numb, and light-headed. However, her case was categorized as non-urgent and placed in a queue for secondary triage. A transfer to a health practitioner failed because referral services were unavailable, but she was told to keep her line open for a callback.
Unbeknownst to authorities at the time, Lackmann had taken a massive amount of caffeine tablets — something she did not disclose during her call.
Ambulance staff made 14 attempts to reach her starting at 8:17 p.m., even sending a text message, but received no response. Her case was upgraded an hour later, but ambulances assigned to her were repeatedly redirected to more urgent calls between 9:14 p.m. and 1:46 a.m.
By the time help arrived at 2:23 a.m., Lackmann had already died. Paramedics found her bluish and cold, and no resuscitation was attempted. She was declared dead at 3 a.m.
The autopsy revealed an extremely high level of caffeine in her system — 290 mg/L in her blood and 940 mg/L in her stomach. Toxicologists confirmed this could not have resulted from drinking coffee alone, and was more consistent with ingesting the equivalent of at least 1,000 mg of caffeine, or 10 caffeine tablets.
Experts who testified in the inquest said that caffeine toxicity is rarely fatal if the patient receives urgent hospital treatment. Dr. Narendra Gunja, a toxicology and emergency medicine specialist, emphasized that Lackmann could have survived had she been admitted to a hospital right after her call.
Her official cause of death was listed as caffeine toxicity. The case has raised concerns over emergency response delays and the dangers of unregulated caffeine intake.
