Woman dies after buying banned slimming pills on the internet

A young woman desperate to lose weight died in agony a day after taking a lethal dose of a banned fat-burning drug she bought over the internet.

Selena Walrond, who weighed 15st and was 5ft 3in tall, was so obsessed with being slim that she took five times the recommended daily dose.

Known as DNP or dinitrophenol, the drug has never been licensed in the UK and was banned in the U.S. in 1938 due to its potentially lethal side-effects.

Miss Walrond, 26, had struggled with her weight for years and became so ashamed of her shape that she was afraid to leave her home in Croydon, South London.

In desperation, she searched the internet for weight-loss drugs, stumbling upon DNP, which is used by bodybuilders and athletes to lose weight quickly by increasing their metabolic rate to burn calories.

But the yellow pills sent her heart-rate racing and her temperature soaring.

The next day, Miss Walrond was found by her mother Anjennis feverish and sweating in a cold bath, desperately trying to cool down.

She took her daughter to hospital as Miss Walrond became highly agitated. Medics tried to calm her down but eight hours later she had a fatal cardiac arrest.

Yesterday her mother said: 'I'll never forget her yellow fingernails and skin  -  the drug was sweating out of her.

'Selena's life has been cruelly snatched away, all because she was desperate to lose weight. DNP is lethal. If you want to lose weight, do it the sensible way.'

Miss Walrond's sister Asha, 30, added: 'Her weight used to embarrass her and she was not confident enough to leave the house sometimes.'

Miss Walrond is thought to have bought the DNP from a Chinese website five days before her death last August.

Coroner Roy Palmer, recording a verdict of accidental death at the hearing in Croydon, said: 'I do not for a moment think Selena intended to die. She intended to lose weight.'

The Food Standards Agency has warned against the drug, which is illegal to sell in the UK.