Featured Image Credit: (CTV News)
Topics: Alcohol, Health, World News, Drugs, Crime
Brenna Cooper
A young man died in agony after drinking a can of what he believed to be imported Canadian beer.
In March 2023, Aiden Sagala decided to crack open a cold one and relax after a day at work.
After arriving home, Aiden - who lived with his sister Angela and brother-in-law, Billy Anelusi in Auckland, New Zealand - decided to try one of the Canadian imported beers gifted to him by his boss, named 'Honey Bear Beer'.
Little did he know, the can of what he thought was beer would turn out to be something far more deadly.
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Both Aiden and Billy decided to try one of the beers; however, the 21-year-old realised that something wasn't right with his drink from the first sip.
It would later turn out the 'beer' Aiden had opened was actually full of liquid methamphetamine, with a single sip delivering a fatal dose.
Aiden's health quickly deteriorated from there, with the young man falling into a coma and dying in hospital just five days later.
His sister and brother have now spoken out about their harrowing ordeal, as New Zealand police work to clamp down on the transnational drugs trade, which took Aiden's life.
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Recalling the moment in an interview with CTV News, Billy recalled his brother-in-law being excited to try a Canadian beer brand, saying: "We thought it was a new brand that’s about to start up in New Zealand and we saw the Canadian logo, the flag logo. It was like, oh cool, we thought it was from Canada, that’s pretty cool then."
However, Aiden immediately realised something was wrong after the first sip, telling Billy that his drink tasted 'salty'. He then took a sip from Aiden's can and immediately spat it out. "it tasted like sea salt with chemicals. I told him I didn’t fully swallow," he recalled.
He remembers Aiden going to phone his mother moments before he became unwell.
"He was screaming out, ‘I want my mom, I want my mom. I’m dying, I want mom. I’m dying, I want mom," Billy said.
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Billy then called his wife, Aiden's sister, who rushed home and phoned an ambulance, performing CPR on her brother in the meantime.
"He said to me, 'Sis, I’m dying'. And I said, ‘You are absolutely not dying, not today, not on my watch',"Angela, a doctor, recalled.
"He did die on my watch," she added. "It’s so hard to relive the fact that those were the last words that my brother had spoken… he died in my arms that day."
In the aftermath of Aiden's death, police officers set up Operation Lavender and were able to seize more than 700 kilograms of methamphetamine imported from Canada in containers of maple syrup and beer.
Shipments containing the drug were also recovered from India and the US.
Two men have since been charged in connection with Aiden's death, including his boss Himatjit 'Jimmy' Kahlon, who received a 21-year prison sentence. A second man, named Baltej Singh, received a 22-year sentence (per CTV News).
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However, the outlet, which worked with the Investigative Journalism Foundation to cover Aiden's death and the following investigation, revealed no charges were made regarding the export of the drugs from Canada.