A teenager's mum has spoken out about the night her daughter was needle spiked in a pub. 18-year-old Issabelle Knight was enjoying a night out with her friend when the incident took place, on Saturday, August 6.
The friends planned to finish off the night in a pub called the White Hart. Her mother Katy Shortt says Issabelle remembers dancing at the pub before noticing a scratching sensation on the back of her right arm.
The only other thing the teen remembers is waking up outside the pub, covered in a foil blanket with her mum and police officers next to her. Mrs Shortt told Cornwall Live: "Issabelle told me she was on the dancefloor, people were getting a bit gropey.
"She moved away and felt the scratch on her arm. She looked down, saw what looked like a needle mark, and panicked. A man in front of her asked what's wrong and that's the last thing she could remember until an hour later."
Issabelle and her friend went outside the pub and she quickly fell ill. Mrs Shortt, who lives walking distance from the White Hart, was phoned by her daughter's friend who was panicking and saying Issabelle had been spiked with a needle.
Mrs Shortt said at first she assumed it was just "18-year-olds exaggerating and overreacting to drinking too much", but when she arrived she immediately knew something was wrong.
"I raced to check on her," she said. "She was lying on the floor going 'mum, mum, mum, ring an ambulance something is wrong.' I said 'come on, you drank too much', but she made me look at her arm.
"I worked as a vaccinator a while ago and it was an injection mark on her arm, you can tell. I thought my daughter was dying, I didn't know what to do. She was semi-conscious and people were still fighting in the area outside the pub. For all they knew someone was in dying."
Police officers arrived and screened off the 18-year-old, after checking the needle mark themselves and taking samples of blood to check what had been injected. Mrs Shortt said she drove Issabelle to hospital with a police escort as there were no ambulances available, and her daughter remained there overnight.
This afternoon, August 7, Issabelle began to come around from her state of semi-consciousness, according to her mother. She said said doctors also took samples to check for blood-born viruses.
"The doctors said she must have had some kind of sedative," she added. "If her friend hadn't been with her she could have gone away and then God knows what would have happened to her. Issabelle doesn't remember much but she said she noticed another girl who seemed completely absent, partly passed out, being groped by men there. We just have to wait now to find out if she's okay."
Mrs Shortt added that the police were "excellent" after she flagged down a passing patrol car. The incident, she further said, is now under investigation.
Mrs Shortt said the pub was cleared by police after they arrived and saw Issabelle's state. A manager at the White Hart declined to comment.
