Woman choked to death on a sandwich in front of her sister who thought she was joking

Tina Ferchal suffered a serious cardiac arrest and sustained a brain injury during the tragic incident at her sister’s wine bar.
Moments before the popular 44-year-old had been laughing and joking with friends.
After a coroner ruled her death
was an accident relatives paid their tributes to the well-liked mother-of-one and say Tina always “lived life to the full”.
North Staffordshire Coroner’s Court was told Tina had gone to her sister’s venue, Dominque’s Wine Bar in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, on February 25 this year.
Her sister Dominique Moult said: “Me and my husband picked her up in the car and went to the bar. We were laughing and joking in the car, nothing felt out of the ordinary.
“She went upstairs to get some blue roll for the cold buffet food and came skipping down the stairs.”
But Dominque said as Tina came over to her she was unable to speak.
She said: “She came round the bar and I put my arm around her, she was trying to talk but no words were coming out.

“I thought she was joking because we had been to see a clairvoyant and I thought she would start laughing and speak to me but then I realised she wasn’t joking.
“She looked confused but not frightened. We put her down on a chair but her face and arm dropped and we thought she’d had a stroke.”
The hearing was told that paramedics arrived and attempted to clear Tina’s airwaves.
Medics say the choking had prompted a cardiac arrest and her brain had also been starved of oxygen causing serious injury.
Tina, who was formerly known as Martine Bailey, passed away at the Royal Stoke University Hospital on February 28.
North Staffordshire’s Assistant Coroner David James recorded a conclusion of accidental death.
He said: “Tina died from choking on a sandwich which triggered cardiac arrest which then caused a brain injury, namely hypoxic-ischaemic brain injury, which was the terminal link in the sequence of events.”