Photo/Illutration Headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Department (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The Metropolitan Police Department on Sept. 21 arrested four Vietnamese men and women on charges of leaving a Vietnamese woman who became unstable after taking MDMA unattended to die without proper medical care.

Police said the four, aged between 21 and 27, were with a 23-year-old Vietnamese woman at a nightclub in the Yushima district of the capital’s Bunkyo Ward in the early hours of May 2 this year.

They took a synthetic narcotic drug known as MDMA together at the club, which sent the woman into an intoxicated state of frenzy.

But the four did not call for an ambulance and left the woman unattended for about 40 minutes from around 2 a.m.

Later, one of the four called an ambulance and the woman, unconscious at the time, was transported to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.

The cause of her death was acute MDMA intoxication and suffocation caused by an obstructed airway. 

When an ambulance arrived at the scene, an alley close to the Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line’s Yushima Station, a wet hand towel was shoved inside her mouth.

Police believe one of the four pushed it into her mouth so that she would not bite her tongue.

One of the four has told investigators, “If we called police or asked for an ambulance, our drug use would be found out, too.”

Police first arrested the four on charges of using MDMA in May and June.

One of them at the time told investigators, “We bought MDMA for 10,000 yen ($70) per tablet from a dealer at a club and each of us took a tablet,” police said.

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