stargurl

Taken from Pulse24: http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Sto...02-006/page.asp

A Fatal Experiment?

An internet café popular with gamers and chatroom participants housed a grisly scene early Saturday morning. A 17-year-old girl was found dead inside the Alpha Lounge on Bloor Street.

Police figured Sunday that it was an overdose of the drug Ecstasy that killed Nicole Malik, but only a coroner’s toxicology report will confirm the suspicion.

Meantime, her brothers are devastated. “She’s too young to die,” Shawn Malik said of his younger sister. “I know she was curious (but) I told her, ‘Stay away from drugs’.”

Nicole had been living with an aunt near Barrie. She had come to Toronto two days ago to visit friends.

The teen was a member at the computer-entertainment café where she died which, ironically, owner Brian Lee said was meant to provide an alternative to the city's rave scene. At some point Friday night, she apparently started to feel ill and lay down on a couch. That’s where her body was found.

Kornflake~Girl

poor girl.

I hope her family gets the support it needs now.

__________________
**Guilty before prooven innocent**

~*~pRiNcEsS juLiA~*~

Awww. such a tragedy. and she was soo young.

__________________
-=pRiNcEsS juLiA=-


LiVe LiFe... duNt LeT LiFe LiVe yEw

stargurl

Monday, December 3, 2001
Ecstasy kills teen girl
Her experiment ends in tragedy
By ROB GRANATSTEIN, TORONTO SUN

Toronto Police are blaming Ecstasy for the death of a 17-year-old girl -- believed to be trying the drug for the first time -- at a downtown Internet cafe.

Nicole Malik collapsed and died on the floor of the Alphalounge on Bloor St. W., just west of Bathurst, at 11 a.m. Saturday after taking two hits of Ecstasy, police believe.

Nicole's aunt, Roma Toffan, is shocked her niece could try Ecstasy once, or possibly have it slipped into a drink, and end up dead in just a matter of hours.

"To lose Nicole to this, it doesn't fit," said Toffan, who was also Nicole's legal guardian. "It's very difficult to accept because she wasn't a user. She was always telling her friends not to do drugs because they were terrible.

"She was not into the awful stuff of drugs and the coroner's report confirmed that," Toffan said last night through tears from her home near Horseshoe Resort.

Toronto Police Det. Daryle Gerry confirmed Nicole was not known to be part of the drug or rave crowd.

"The early indications are she was new to the drug scene," Gerry said.

She died before the ambulance arrived at the computer cafe.

Toffan's been told Nicole, who was staying with her brother in Toronto for the weekend, met with some old friends and some people she didn't know and was given or took Ecstasy.

The coroner's office will have to wait a couple of weeks for toxicology results to confirm the cause of death, deputy chief coroner Dr. Barry McLellan said.

Nicole knew how drugs could destroy a family, her aunt said, and she wasn't interested.

She was removed from her family when she was four years old and grew up living with her grandparents.

Two years ago, she moved out of Toronto and in with her aunt.

The Grade 12 student had come to Toronto for a break from the small town where she lived.

She was also trying to decide what to do with her future. She was hoping to study interior design.

"She was a regular 17-year-old teenager," Toffan said. "She kept to herself and was very loyal to her friends. She's left a huge void."

CLOSE TO BOYFRIEND

Nicole was also very close to her boyfriend, Jason.

Nicole's uncle, Frank Tietz, demanded the teen's death not go unnoticed.

"Too many kids are dying from this," he said. "You have to keep on it. Don't just think about it today, keep telling people this drug is deadly."

Funeral arrangements have not been completed. Toffan said a memorial will also be held on Saturday at her home.

The Alphalounge was quiet yesterday, 24 hours after Nicole's death.

A man with a tattoo on his head and multiple piercings said he was sleeping on the couch at the Alphalounge when Nicole collapsed.

"When I got to her, she was blue," said the frequent patron of the Internet cafe and games centre, who refused to give his name.

"She was foaming out of her nose," added the man, who said he held Nicole in his arms until emergency personnel arrived.

The Alphalounge is a Toronto Internet Cafe, with 18 computers where mainly teens go to play video games over computer networks, surf the web or watch movies.

CandyGirl23

That is horrible.... I hope they release the coroner's report, because I am curious if it was mdma or another adulterated pill... it seems more than ever education is increasingly important.

BeckyBoo

that is fucking sad

Mr.T

unless she took it without knowing (ie: sliped in her drink) I just wonder why she would do that in an internet cafe?

__________________
My fist + your face = problem solved

DownLow 420 (shameless Plug)

stargurl

Toronto Star: December 3, 2001

For cyber-cafe gamers, death no longer unreal
Christian Cotroneo
Staff Reporter

Up a narrow, anonymous staircase and behind a door with the words Members Only emblazoned across it, a bomb is ticking.

And it's up to Dan Spiteri to defuse it. Wired on caffeine, his face bathed in the ghastly glow of a computer monitor, he moves slowly up a shadow-filled alley.

Machine gun fire replies, driving him back out into the courtyard.

"I'm not walking in there," he says, backing off.

He's playing Counterstrike, an Internet game that pits terrorists against counterterrorists in a race against time.

Spiteri, 23, has been playing video games since he was 10 years old. He's seen men die, buildings and even entire cities explode. But he's never seen anything like what happened Saturday morning at his favourite Internet club: Alpha Lounge on Bloor St. W. near Bathurst St.

That's when another patron died in his arms.

Nicole Malik, 17, of Oro Station, had taken ecstasy, hours before people at the cafe noticed her slumped on a couch.

"I was the one holding her when she died," he says, scarcely turning his eye from the monitor. "We were about to take her to the hospital."

Spiteri says he was "interrogated" by police for much of the day and treated as though he had a role in the affair. He may have kept up a brave front, "but I got on the phone with my mom and just bawled. It sucks."

That's where the club comes in. "Video games help take my mind off things," he says.

The manager, who didn't want to be identified, feels gaming clubs have unfairly come under fire. "This place was meant as a refuge from the reality outside these doors."

It's a refuge that Spiteri relishes - a narrow, dimly lit room with about 14 powerful computers lining the walls. And rows of silent faces, staring into the screens. Some have headsets on that allow them to shout commands to other team members from as far away as Texas.

Little about those distant players is known save for their online aliases, but it doesn't prevent them from forging friendships in the heat of battle.

At one end of the room, a couch faces a large television screen, where patrons can get away from the business of battle and take in a film. The club offers free screenings of action titles such as Terminator, Rapid Fire, Battlefield Earth and Menace 2 Society, as well as animated features like Akira and several comedies.

While there isn't a lot of food to be had - a jar of pepperoni sticks, chocolate bars - there's coffee, a staple for any serious gamer.

In the last month, Spiteri has slept at home only "five or six" times. "I go home, shower, change, come back," he says of his rigorous gaming routine. "We order pizza here."

At $3 per hour, gaming doesn't seem to cost a lot, but for diehard gamers, who devote every waking moment to cybergames, it can add up. To feed his habit, Spiteri helps out at the cafe, doing odd jobs and handing out flyers to kids on their way to school in the morning.

The cafe attracts gamers of every stripe, from teenagers to 40-year-olds. But mostly of the male variety.

"It's mostly guys - like 90 per cent," says a club manager.

With reincarnation only a few strokes of the keyboard away, Spiteri has little fear of death. But when the real thing happened Saturday, he could scarcely recognize it.

"It was weird. I really didn't know what to think at the time. I didn't know that she died until the ambulance got here."

stargurl

Toronto Star - December 3, 2001

Ecstasy suspected in cyber-cafe death
17-year-old was drug novice, friends, family say
Gail Swainson
Staff Reporter

MOURNING: Cassie Donovan, 17, a friend of Nicole Malik, stands near where the two teens lived in Oro Station.
She had only tried ecstasy once before. Her best friend pleaded with her not to try it again.

But sometime during Saturday's early morning hours, 17-year-old Nicole Malik died of a suspected overdose of the drug.

For the avid video-gamers who filled the dim Internet cafe on Bloor St. W., it wasn't immediately obvious. They were bent on digital destruction, playing the cafe's most popular action games, Quake, Diablo and Counterstrike.

Their passion could keep them glued to flickering monitors for hours at a time.

She was slumped on a sofa, an anonymous figure seemingly spent from a night of revelry.

When it dawned on Dan Spiteri that there might be a problem, it was too late. The 23-year-old took her in his arms and tried to revive her. But Malik never woke up.

Although the cause of her death has yet to be confirmed, it leaves a lasting question on the minds of friends and family: Why would an honour role student at Orillia's Park Street Collegiate, who was "adamantly against" drugs, take ecstasy?

"She was a very smart girl, very artistic and ambitious," said a distraught Robin Simpson, Malik's cousin. "She was a top student, a really talented, superb person who had everything going for her."

Her mother, Donna Malik, recalls a girl who had little taste for drugs or the street scene. She wanted to be an interior designer.

"My daughter did not use street drugs," Donna Malik said. "She was adamantly against drugs."

Best friend Cassie Donovan said Malik said she had done the drug "only once before, last weekend, and it was just a once-in-a-while thing, to have fun.

"I was really upset with her for doing it and we made a bargain that she would never do it again," Donovan said yesterday.

While Donovan said Malik was an occasional pot smoker, she never touched chemical drugs — at least until the week before her death.

Malik went to the Alpha Lounge, near Bloor and Bathurst St., sometime Friday evening with two friends, who would later say Malik had one more taste of the illegal drug in the hours before her death.

"I saw her just four hours before she went out," Donna Malik said. "She was excited and bubbly. I gave her a few dollars and a Metropass."

Malik had moved to her brother Shawn's home in Toronto on Thursday from her Oro Station home just north of Barrie, where she lived for two years with her aunt Roma Toffan and Simpson. Before that, Malik lived with her grandparents and other relatives since she was 5.

"This is almost incomprehensible for us," said Toffan, hours after returning from Toronto, where she made funeral arrangements for her niece. "I would like kids to get the message that there are so many drugs out there that can kill you."

Detective Daryle Gerry said yesterday that police believe Malik died from the effects of ecstasy.

"All indications are that she did ingest ecstasy; all signs point to a drug death," Gerry said, adding Malik was "a relative newcomer to the scene."

Ecstasy is a "very unpredictable drug that is extremely dangerous even in small quantities," Gerry added.

Deputy chief coroner Dr. Barry McLellan said yesterday it's still too early to tell what actually killed Malik and that it could be months before toxicology tests are completed.

"At this point in time, we are not in any position to call this an ecstasy death," McLellan said yesterday. "But there may still be a message here about ecstasy, that someone can die from even one pill."

Brian Lee, owner of the Alpha Lounge, said he met Malik when she entered the members-only lounge on Friday night.

"She was clever, quite smart," he said. "She told me she had plans to study some kind of design. She was commenting on how well-designed the room was."

Lee said Malik was at a computer terminal in the lounge, a second-storey room over a video store, when he left at 10 p.m.

A young, mostly male crowd — who play computer games, surf the Internet or choose from a wide variety of films to watch — frequents his lounge.

"I don't allow drugs or alcohol in here," Lee said. "I don't do it, so I don't expect anyone else to do it."

Ecstasy, also known as MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine), is an amphetamine-based stimulant and hallucinogen. Studies have shown that MDMA depletes serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood, memory, sexual activity, sleep and pain sensitivity. It leaves users with a feeling of euphoria and a loss of inhibitions. Since 1998, it has left 20 people in Ontario dead.

As a tiny pill, it's easily smuggled into venues.

While only three months old, the Alpha Lounge has already drawn a regular cast of bleary-eyed gaming addicts who spend every waking moment at the 24-hour club — with the help of plenty of caffeinated beverages.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With files from Jim Wilkes and Christian Cotroneo

stargurl

Letter to the Editor: Toronto Star: December 4, 2001

Drugs aren't the problem

Despite deputy chief coroner Dr. Barry McLellan's statement that toxicity reports will take months to be completed, the police and officials are claiming that Nicole Malik's unfortunate death is a result of the effects of ecstasy (MDMA). This amounts to fear-mongering on the part of legislators with special interests.

It baffles me that all the so-called ecstasy-related deaths have as statistics young users, the 17-to-25 set. Why is this happening? Why aren't 35-year-olds dying from the use of ecstasy? I am 33 and have over the past few years, in the course of any given night out, used anywhere from one to three hits of ecstasy and I'm still alive. A broader view of my social group sees club goers from the ages of 25 to 55 using ecstasy on a regular basis and they are all still alive. They are doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, information technologists, librarians, insurance brokers and real estate agents. All contributing members of society with respectable professions that suggest a high level of education.

What was that? Education? Yes, and there's the key to survival in any given situation; education. However, our present legislators and police chiefs have generated a climate that does not encourage youth to educate themselves regarding drug use.

Instead of giving unbiased and clear information to our youth regarding drugs and putting the tools in their hands, we criminalize drugs, deterring youth from finding out the truth and understanding the responsibilities that attend their actions. Parents, who've never taken these drugs and who largely don't know the first thing about club culture, are encouraged to reiterate the hysteria handed down by law enforcement officials.

So long free thought and so long to a system that is supposed to encourage debate, the hearing and understanding of various points of view to help us build a society of citizens who are improved as a result of the debate. My friends and I are alive, as we have said to hell with the police and legislators who continue to pour new wine into very, very old skins.

Present laws and perceptions regarding drug use have moved beyond mere irrelevance to tragic and sickening irresponsibility on the part of government officials and law enforcers.

It's time for the folks in Toronto's City Hall and legislators across the country to wake up and accept the fact that despite archaic and brutish laws people, both young and old, are going to use drugs. It's time to accept that fact and work with that reality instead of against it.

Glenn Curry

Toronto

*sExsiE bonKa*

i feel so badly fer her family
she was so young...*sigh*...its things like ths that make me wanna be sober fer the rest of my life.....

but i mean, why does the media have to make it seem as tho she was hanging around "bad" ppl?
^^^ an excerpt from one of stargurl's posts....sheesh
is this madness ever gunna end?!?!?!?!?!?!?

__________________
*it's better to burn out then fade away*
**PLeUR**

stargurl

Charges laid in teen's death at café
Police suspect girl had taken ecstasy at Internet lounge

Natalie Alcoba
STAFF REPORTER

Two employees of a downtown Internet café where a 17-year-old girl died have been charged in connection with her death.

Johnrex Bernandino, 29, of Mississauga, is charged with criminal negligence causing death and trafficking in a controlled substance. Paul Busch, 19, of Toronto, is charged with criminal negligence causing death.

Both men work at the Alpha Lounge on Bloor St. W. where Nicole Malik was found slumped on a couch early Saturday morning by a patron. Police suspect that she took the banned drug ecstasy before her death. She died before an ambulance arrived.

Detective Daryle Gerry said Malik was friends with Busch and an acquaintance of Bernandino's. Police believe she voluntarily took the drug, which they say was provided by Bernandino.

The cause of death has not been determined. Drug test results are not expected for several weeks.

Gerry added that police are concerned about the lack of medical assistance provided to the teenager. "We believe (the ambulance) could have been called earlier."

The cyber-lounge was open for business last night. A notice on the door advises patrons that "Alpha Lounge is a drug-free environment." It warns, "any member caught in possession of narcotics will be permanently banned from entering."

Malik had just moved to Toronto from Oro Station, north of Barrie, to live with her brother. Friends of Malik told The Star earlier that the honour roll student was not an avid drug user. "We're still confident that she's relatively new to the drug," said Gerry.

Bernandino will appear at Old City Hall court today at 10 a.m. for a bail hearing.Busch has been released.

Ecstasy, also known as MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine), is an amphetamine-based stimulant and hallucinogen.

Police are asking the public to watch for blue tablets bearing a Superman crest. Anyone with information can contact 416-808-1400.

Camrose

"Police are asking the public to watch for blue tablets bearing a Superman crest. Anyone with information can contact 416-808-1400."

On DanceSafe.org, some test results for superman E are turning out to be PMA.

> PMA is paramethoxyamphetamine. It is a hallucinogenic stimulant that some people experimented with in the 1970s, but which never became a popular recreational drug due to its high toxicity. It is one of the most dangerous and toxic hallucinogens known.

You never know what she took. It's sad what happened to her.

Amy