A heartbroken woman has called for laughing gas to be banned after her 16-year-old sister died when she inhaled it at a party. Kayleigh Burns collapsed moments after taking the gas.
She was at a house party in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Her sister Clare Baker, 31, told the LiverpoolECHO that she received a message from a friend of Kayleigh, originally from Halewood, Merseyside, to say that she had been taken to hospital in an ambulance.
She then rang around hospitals to find out what was happening. However, officers from Merseyside Police later came to her home to tell her that Kayleigh, who was a few weeks away from her 17th birthday, had died.
Clare, from North Liverpool, said: "My sister was only 16, almost 17, and she was the most amazing little girl ever. The bond that we had, I can't even describe.
"Kayleigh grew up and had a good childhood and she was in a loving family. As she grew older she got mixed up with the wrong sort of people.
"She was interested in make-up and fashion and wanted to travel the world. She wanted to be an air hostess or work on the cruises and her life was taken away from her."
Clare said Kayleigh moved to Coventry to live with her girlfriend, before moving to Leamington Spa. She had come to visit her family a week before her death in June.
People who were at the house party sent Kayleigh's family videos of the asthmatic teen inhaling nitrous oxide. Later the same night she complained of feeling "too hot" before collapsing and being taken to hospital. Her family wants to raise awareness of the dangers of nitrous oxide and are urging the government to ban the drug or add an age limit to it.
Clare told The ECHO: "I will be missing a huge piece of my heart for the rest of my life now and I don't know how I'm going to go on without her. But I need to because I have kids.
"I want people to think about what they are taking before they take it because they're going to leave people behind who love them. People may think it is a laugh and a joke, but it's not, they're playing with their lives.
"I want it (nitrous oxide) to be banned. They have upped the legal age of buying it in America today to 21. I know people use it in the food industry, but I think there sound be some sort of ID card or at least an age requirement.
"I don't want this to happen to anybody else. We have lost our Kayleigh forever now."
