Plea after ecstasy death

The family of a 16-year-old girl who died after taking ecstasy at an illegal all-night rave made an emotional appeal today to catch the dealers who gave her the drug.

Sophie Ksher, who had hoped to become a vet, was on a life-support machine in hospital for almost a week before her family took the heartbreaking decision to allow her to die.

Today police said they had known the rave was taking place in a disused factory in Buckinghamshire but they had had "insufficient manpower" to shut it down.

Sophie, from Arlesey, Bedfordshire, took two tablets when she went to the rave with friends. She quickly collapsed, banged her head and slipped into a coma. A hospital scan found two blood clots and swelling to her brain. She died six days later, on 6 February in the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford.

Today at a press conference her brother Mark, 29, blamed dealers and the rave organisers for her death. He said Sophie had just left school. "She was just 16 and had her whole life ahead of her. We will all remember our Sophie as the happy, loving, beautiful young girl who had the cheeky little grin that made everyone's heart melt.

"She loved being involved in sports at school and horse riding - she desperately wished she would have a horse of her own one day - but most of all she loved spending time with her family and friends."

Mr Ksher said none of the family would ever have dreamed she would be involved in drug-taking or would have attended such a rave.

He said: "Today's society says you can make your own decisions and do what you want when you are 16. Our family does not see it that way.

"The people who put my sister in an environment of drugs and alcohol need to be stopped to prevent other people from having to go through what we have." He said someone supplied Sophie with the drugs and therefore helped to end her life. "Our whole family still has not been able to come to terms with her death."

Sophie's sister Danielle, 19, said: "We're devastated. This should serve as a terrible warning to other young people. Because of her age half a tablet could have had a dramatic effect. They were obviously tablets with something bad in them."

A Thames Valley Police spokeswoman said the rave was held in Cressex, a suburb of High Wycombe, on 31 January. "There were 400 people there and we have spoken to some of them but we need more to come forward," she said.

"We are after witnesses and information about the organisers of the rave and about people peddling drugs. People who come forward don't need to fear anything. We won't prosecute them for saying 'I was there'."

Detective Inspector Phillip Chandler, leading the investigation, told the press conference, at Gerrards Cross police station in Buckinghamshire, that he blamed the dealers who supplied the ecstasy and those who organised the event with no health and safety measures.