A young woman smoked heroin and crack cocaine with her boyfriend before she was found dead in a High Wycombe hotel room, an inquest has heard.

Ancuta-Valentina Surdariu, known as Valentina, complained of breathing difficulties to her boyfriend in their Travelodge room after they smoked drugs in his car in November last year.

Saeed Iqbal, Valentina’s partner, asked the 24-year-old if she needed to go to the hospital, but she said no and he went to sleep.

When he woke up at just after 12pm on November 8, Valentina was dead.

The young woman, who had lived in the UK since 2008, had decided to go back to her home country of Romania two months before her death so she could get her life back on track.

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She had only returned to the UK a day before she died.

At an inquest into her death at Buckinghamshire Coroner’s Court on Tuesday, Mr Iqbal said they had been together for around five years and that Valentina was “heavily addicted” to cocaine and heroin.

The pair lived in shared accommodation and moved around a lot, before they both decided she should return to Romania because it was harder to get hold of drugs there.

Two months later, in the early hours of November 7, Valentina returned to the UK, with Mr Iqbal picking her up from Dover.

The pair drove back to High Wycombe and checked into Travelodge for three days while they looked for somewhere else to live.

In a statement read out at the inquest, Mr Iqbal said although Valentina had had treatment in hospital in Romania and was taking medication to help with her drug addiction, she asked him if they could buy drugs “for the last time”.

They met up with a drug dealer and bought cocaine and heroin, which they smoked together in Mr Iqbal’s car in a car park before heading back to their room to sleep.

Mr Iqbal said: “She felt she was having difficulty breathing and that her chest felt heavy. I asked if she wanted to go to hospital – she said no.

“I went to bed and when I woke up on November 8, I thought she was still asleep. I shook her shoulder, calling to her. She wouldn’t wake up. I was 100 per cent sure she was dead. I couldn’t describe what I felt. She was everything to me. She had everything to look forward to.

“I couldn’t believe she would die from a drug overdose. In the past, we would have 10 times the amount and she would be fine.”

Travelodge housekeeping supervisor Jolita Vaitkuniene said in a statement that she saw Mr Iqbal looking “shocked and upset” as he ran to the hotel reception at around 12pm.

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She said: “I asked him if I could help. He said, ‘my wife died, she is already cold, she died’. I tried to calm him down.”

Staff checked the room before calling the police, who investigated but concluded there was nothing suspicious about Valentina’s death.

Valentina’s sister Cosmina told the inquest her sister had started smoking cannabis when she was a teenager but had got into “serious drugs” when she got into her relationship.

She said: “Valentina wanted to go back to Romania and asked me to go with her. We drove and got the ferry to France. [Saeed] kept calling her. I told her not to answer but she did.

“We were driving in France but decided to turn around and go back to the UK as she became very ill. When we got back to High Wycombe I said ‘if you call Saeed I’m not talking to you’. She was driving – we went to Saeed’s caravan in Castlefield. I was angry.”

Valentina did later go back to Romania and Cosmina said she was “doing well”, adding: “She said she never wanted to come back to the UK.”

One Recovery Bucks said Valentina had self-referred to their service for help with opiate addiction in March 2019 but had no further contact with them as she was returning to Romania.

A post-mortem found that Valentina had “elevated” levels of morphine, likely as a result of smoking the cocaine and heroin.

The pathologist found that because Valentina had spent time away from drugs while in Romania, her tolerance to the effect of the drugs was reduced.

Dr John Slaughter’s toxicology report found the amount of morphine in Valentina’s blood would likely prove toxic, except to someone who had a tolerance to drugs.

Her cause of death was morphine toxicity.

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Valentina’s devastated family, who were in the court room during the inquest, felt her death needed further looking into.

Assistant coroner for Buckinghamshire Alison McCormick said: “I know how difficult all of this is and you will feel the inquest has not given you the closure you need and I apologise for that, but I cannot step outside of my role.

“I am sorry you lost Valentina at such a young age in terrible circumstances. You have had a terrible loss, and for that I am very, very sorry.”

Her death was ruled to be drug-related.

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