A coronor has concluded that 16-year-old American student Davis Cripe died of heart failure caused by drinking too much caffeine
The brokenhearted father of teenager Davis Cripe - who suffered heart failure after drinking too much caffeine - has urged parents to talk to their children about the dangers of energy drinks.
Davis - who was described as 'perfectly healthy' - collapsed in his South Carolina classroom last month after drinking a large Mountain Dew, a latte and an energy drink within two hours.
Talking about a press conference following the verdict, Davis' father Sean Cripe, pleaded with other parents, saying: "I stand before you as a brokenhearted father and hope that something good can come from this.
"Parents, please, talk to your kids about the dangers of these energy drinks. And teenagers and students, please stop buying them. There's no reason to consume them they can be very dangerous."
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Coroner Gary Watts added: "What we want to do here today is make people understand that these drinks – this amount of caffeine, how it’s ingested – can have dire consequences."
He went on to say: "The same amount of caffeine on another day may have been right.
"You can have five people line up and all of them do the exact same thing with him that day, or even drink more, and it may not have any type of effect on them at all. That is what’s so dangerous.”
Although, as the coroner explained, caffeine will effect different people in different ways, according to the website Caffeine Informer, 300 - 400mg of caffeine is a healthy amount for most adults.
According to the NHS, energy drinks typically contain around 80mg of caffeine per can, however Davis' father pleaded with children to avoid them entirely, saying: "Teenagers and students, please stop buying them! There’s no reason to consume them."
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