Caroline Flack's friends 'pleaded with ambulance' to take her on night before she died
Report by ITV News Correspondent Juliet Bremner
Friends of Caroline Flack have been telling an inquest how they pleaded with an ambulance crew the night before she died to take her to hospital.
But the Love Island star didn’t want to go and in the end her friends were told to stay with her and “babysit her”.
Mollie Grosberg, who had known Caroline for around 15 years, said that her friend had sent a text to her on the evening before her death saying: “I’m killing myself and you don’t know where I am.”
She and another friend, Louise Teasdale, immediately went round to her flat.
They found her slumped on the sofa, apparently unconscious, with tablets scattered around, she had “clearly had a breakdown on her own”, Ms Teasdale told the court.
Her friends both said they were worried about calling an ambulance because they knew Caroline wouldn’t like it.
However they did eventually decide to call 111, who dispatched a crew.
When she was asked directly if she had attempted suicide, Caroline denied it - instead she told the ambulance crew she had a headache.
Ms Grosberg told the inquest: “We were saying please, please take her but Caroline kept saying ‘no’.”
And in the end the crew advised them to stay with Caroline and “babysit” her.
Coroner Mary Hassell suggested Flack may have been telling paramedics she was not suicidal to get them out of her house.
The unnamed paramedic said: “We can only go on what we’re told.
“If they’re not giving us information we can’t probe them.
“When we did ask questions she did become quite frustrated – it was clear she didn’t want us there in the first place.”
Ms Grosberg disputed the female paramedic’s account that Caroline Flack was responding clearly that she did not have suicidal tendencies.
Ms Grosberg said: “That’s not what happened. That’s not accurate.
“She (Flack) was slurring her words. If I was a paramedic I could seriously not say she was coherent.”
Mollie described how Caroline’s mental health had deteriorated since she had the argument with her boyfriend, she said she had become “more and more upset... very, very sad all the time.”
“Normally she picked herself up but after December she didn’t seem to have the strength. She had lost herself and couldn’t get it back. "
She described Caroline as being “very scared”, she said that she was scared about going to court, about being sent to prison, about letting her family down.
Ms Grosberg said that Caroline frequently told her “no one will ever understand what I’m going through.” She told the inquest: “She was a good girl, she didn’t do things wrong. So the threat of court was very scary.”