Ally’s tears over teen’s chroming death

The parents of a young girl who died after a snap decision to try chroming have called for action to avoid more deaths like hers.

Esra Haynes was just 13 and at a sleepover when she inhaled aerosol deodorant – a practice called “chroming” – that led to her death.

Her parents Paul and Andrea Haynes have urged children and teens to not make the same mistake as their daughter, saying they had no idea what chroming was until they got the call to say their daughter was being taken to hospital.

“Kids don’t look beyond the next day. They really don’t. Especially not knowing how it can affect them,” Mr Haynes said on A Current Affair.

“The ripple effect is that this is absolutely devastating, we’ve got no child to bring home,” Mrs Haynes said.

Their story was enough to bring the program’s host Ally Langdon to tears.

Young Esra had just been named co-captain of her under-14s AFL team on the day she fell victim to chroming.

Her parents had dropped her off at a sleepover not knowing that hours later, they would be on their way to the hospital.

The 13-year-old spent eight days on life support after suffering a cardiac arrest when she inhaled the aerosol chemicals.

Her family were then forced to make the difficult decision to turn off her life support after doctors found Esra would not recover from the significant brain damage the chroming caused.

“They’re asking us to bring in family friends to say goodbye to our 13-year-old daughter; it was a rare very difficult thing to do for such a young soul,” her father said.

“She was put onto a bed so we could lay with her, we cuddled her.”

Her whole family, including siblings Imogen, Seth and Charlie, arrived at the scene where they saw paramedics trying to save their sister.

“Especially seeing the scene, like the image will never go out of my head. That’s probably the hardest thing for me at the moment,” her brother said.

Mr and Mrs Haynes are calling for action to prevent another death like Esra’s.

They are calling for CPR to be a mandatory lesson in all schools as well as for deodorant formulas to be made safer.

“To me it seems it’s a pistol sitting on the shelf. We need the manufacturers to step up and really change the formulation or the propellants,” Mr Haynes said.