Teenager dies after drinking McDonald's latte, a large Mountain Dew soda, and an energy drink in two hours

16-year-old Davis Allen Cripe, has died after he drank a latte from McDonald's, a large Mountain Dew soda, and a highly caffeinated energy drink within the space of two hours. He collapsed in his high school classroom soon after consuming the liquid drinks.
On Monday, Gary Watts, the coroner of Richland County, South Carolina, revealed that the South Carolina teenager died because he drank highly caffeinated drinks too quickly. He died about an hour after collapsing in a high school near Columbia, South Carolina.

The coroner revealed that it was likely that caffeine would not have been seen as a factor in his death if it had not been for witnesses who could tell officials what Davis had to drink before he collapsed during class. Physicians confirmed Davis died from a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia.

Davis had no heart condition and was considered a healthy teenager prior to his death. The autopsy carried out on him also showed that his heart was in good condition prior to his death. So, the only cause of death was narrowed down to the drinks he took in a short period of time. The coroner, Watts, said the Caffeine was not to blame for his death and he may have had the same amount of caffeine on another day and been alright but the problem was the lack of spacing.

"This is not a caffeine overdose," Mr Watts said. "We're not saying that it was the total amount of caffeine in the system, it was just the way that it was ingested over that short period of time, and the chugging of the energy drink at the end was what the issue was with the cardiac arrhythmia. We're not trying to speak out totally against caffeine. We believe people need to pay attention to their caffeine intake and how they do it, just as they do with alcohol or cigarettes."