A 16-year-old girl suffered an allergic shock after consuming a hot dog at a fast food restaurant in Halkidiki. She felt sick, collapsed and after a while she died, before any help arrived.
The tragedy took place in Hanioti, Halkidiki, northern Greece, in the early hours of Wednesday, July 12, 2023.
According to media reports, the girl was in summer vacations together with some friends.
At some point, the group went to a local restaurant for a hot dog. The girl asked if there was any dairy product in it as she was allergic to. The answer she received was a “No!”
Some time after she ate the hot dog and the group had left the restaurant, the girl said she was not feeling well.
“She had breathing difficulty, she turned pale, her lips turned blue,” a friend of hers told media. The friend added among others, that she had asked the waiter to add no mustard in the hot dog.
Seeing her collapsing, her friends immediately called police and the ambulance service.
Police arrived first and the ambulance 36 minutes later, so the official announcement by the EKAV service.
The girl’s family attributed their daughter’s death to allergic shock, which they estimated was caused by some ingredient in the food she consumed. I
The family said that the girl had an allergy to lactose and for this reason she was very careful when eating out and made sure she had her medication with her.
However, it looks as if she did not had her medication at the fat food restaurant, so a friend immediately rushed to their room in a nearby hotel to get it. When she returned, it was already too late.
The family underlined that it took too long for the ambulance to reach the place where the girl was. According to them, it took 40-45 minutes to cover a distance that in the early morning hours it does not require more than about 15 minutes.
“From the first evidence, it appears that my girl suffered an allergic shock and passed away,” her devastated mother said. “She was the nicest kid and she died just 16 years old without help. At the health center they tried twice to bring her back, but they didn’t succeed,” the mother told newsit.gr
An autopsy was performed by the coroner’s office. The results as well as those of a series of other tests will show the causes of the 16-year-old’s death.
However, no announcement is expected until late Friday afternoon the earliest.
The girl was buried in her hometown Oraiokastro by Thessaloniki on Friday morning.
The girl’s mother and sister fainted during the funeral and an ambulance had to be called in.