The family of the 23-year-old Victorian man that died at Defqon.1, the West Sydney dance music festival held last month, has spoken out about their son’s death at the event and the fatal consequences that led to his tragic passing.

Of the 18,000 festival-goers that attended the event, billed as a “psychedelic wasteland”, 14 were hospitalised and 84 were arrested in relation to drugs. But festival promoters Q-Dance Australia were “deeply saddened” by the death of James Munro, who died of an overdose after swallowing “three pills”, according to Police reports.

Munro had travelled from Bayswater with two friends to attend Defqon.1 and was discovered barely conscious and abandoned before being taken to the festival’s medical tent. The 23-year-old began having seizures just before midday before he was rushed to Nepean Hospital where he suffered several cardiac episodes before doctors pronounced him dead shortly after 10.30pm.

Speaking to reporters on ABC’s The 7:30 ReportJames Munro’s father, Stephen, tells the current affairs program that he believes that his son swallowed the three ecstasy tablets he had on him at the entry gates in a panic at the presence of sniffer dogs and officers at the event.

“There was a police presence at the gates and a concern he would be detected,” explains Stephen; “he had some ecstasy tablets with him [and he] decided to take them before entering Defqon.”

It’s not the first time the panicked decisions of a young festival-goer has had fatal consequences, with a similarly tragic scenario befalling the 17-year-old Gemma Thoms at the Perth Big Day Out festival in 2009.

According to NSW Detective Superintendent Nick Bingham, there were over 100 police present at Defqon.1, admitting that seeing sniffer dogs may spook some punters into ingesting all their drugs at once instead of risking facing a criminal charge, but said police should not be held accountable for doing their job. “People have to be responsible for their own actions,” says the Drug Squad chief. “I think it’s just in the last six months that he has tried [ecstasy] a bit more… He wasn’t doing it all the time.”

Despite increased security and medical staff, paramedics on site at the event described the drug overdoses at Defqon.1 as among the worst ever.

“The overdoses were a lot more intense and a lot more severe in their presentation than we have had in recent years,” said Ambulance Serviceman John Brotherhood, painting a nightmarish scene of the festival’s medical tent were revellers were overdosing on drugs from “every letter in the alphabet,” including MDMA, LSD, GHB, and ecstasy.

Stephen Munro was braced for such a scene when he flew out from Melbourne and rushed directly to Nepean Hospital to see his son in the hours before his death.

“When we arrived we were briefed by doctors preparing us for what we were going to see,” Mr Munro said. “His heart had stopped, [they] had tried to resuscitate and did on several occasions.” But heightened body temperature and damage to James’ bloodstream meant he was already beyond the point of rescue.

“He had a 42 degree temperature and his system failed terribly because of that… his organs failed, and he had started to haemorrhage. He never came out of coma.”

Mr Munro admitted that his son – who had a degree in nursing and was set to start a new job – had used ecstasy before, but that he was far from an addict – calling him a docile boy who did not smoke or drink.

“I think it’s just in the last six months that he has tried it (ecstasy) a bit more,” said Mr Munro. “He wasn’t doing it all the time, just once every month or once every second month. He doesn’t hang out in his bedroom and take this drug, he doesn’t go out by himself and take this drug, he was taking it in a social atmosphere with friends.”

As for how James obtained the three pills that claimed his life, Mr Munro was shocked to learn that his son had purchased the drugs from the website, Silk Road, commonly called the ‘Amazon.com of illegal drugs’.  “There’s no such thing as a good batch or a bad batch. Every batch is bad. You either survive it or you don’t survive it.”

The online store allows users to anonymously browse and purchase a range of illicit substances and have them shipped directly to their home; it is believed that James had his pills mailed to his family address.

“They came in a CD-sized box, so it looks like a video game or a music or a DVD or something like that,” explains Mr Munro. “You just don’t have a clue. It is unfathomable that it was happening, it just blew me away.”

Following his son’s tragic passing, Mr Munro searched through online forums and sites associated with Silk Road and was angered by what he found. “There were drug dealers on those blogs bragging they were somehow reliable suppliers, that they have an ethic of supplying good stuff and not bad stuff, of only supplying this drug and not that sort of drug,” he said.

“I was absolutely stunned to see that sort of communication,” he continues. “There could be a belief I know what I’m doing, I know what I’m buying, that this person wouldn’t sell me anything bad, that I can trust them and make that decision. [But] the fact is, most times even the dealer doesn’t know what’s in the drug. It’s only the manufacturer.”

Just this month, Silk Road had been seized and shut down by the FBI, as ABC News reports. The domo behind the online drug marketplace, 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht, who operated the site under the pseudonym of ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ (a reference to The Princess Bride), was arrested and charged with soliciting murder, narcotics trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering.

Authorities found that Australia was the third largest group using Silk Road and warned Australian drug dealers and users that they would be targeted next.

Upon learning of the Silk Road’s shutdown and its proprietor’s arrest, Mr Munro says, “I was pretty happy, actually. Because I’m sure if it was shut down two weeks earlier, I feel as if James’d be here… And I got to wonder what was it doing up in the first place? And what are we going to do to stop another one from coming up? Because that’s the real danger here.”

Mr Munro said that in light of his personal tragedy that there’s “a real strong message to young people” about drug culture. “There’s no such thing as a good batch or a bad batch. Every batch is bad. You either survive it or you don’t survive it… They are dangerous and don’t take them.”

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