Egypt hotel deaths: Daughter 'thought Mum would survive'

The daughter of a British couple who died on an Egyptian holiday has spoken to the BBC about the ordeal.

John Cooper, 69, and his wife Susan, 63, from Burnley, Lancashire, died within hours of each other in Hurghada on Tuesday.

Egyptian investigators said no harmful gas emissions had been detected and are waiting for forensic results.

Here are some excerpts from the interview with the couple's daughter Kelly Ormerod.

'Best parents'

John and Susan Cooper died on Tuesday

Mum and Dad were the best parents anybody could wish for.

Dad still worked full-time as a builder Mum worked part time for Thomas Cook in the foreign exchange.

Mum was fit and healthy - we used to go to the gym two or three times a week and Dad was the same - he was an active walker.

Dad was a little bit crazy and a little bit mad, always pranking everybody and having a lot of fun with Mum.

'Unwell with the smell'

The hotel is on the Red Sea coast

It was a family holiday that we went on, which we do every summer.

The night before they actually died, we went for a family meal together and we all departed.

Mum and my daughter went back to their bedroom on their own. As soon as they went into the bedroom, my daughter said they could smell something that was a little bit funny, that wasn't right.

All they did was spray a little bit of perfume to try to eliminate the smell.

They then fell asleep and my father came back to the room an hour later, and my daughter woke up and said she felt very unwell with the smell and she wanted to come and return to my room.

So my dad came up to my room at about 01:30 with my daughter. He was fit and healthy and we said goodnight, see you tomorrow.

'Something seriously wrong'

Hurghada is a popular tourist resort

The following morning they didn't come down to breakfast and normally they were down at 6am and getting the sunbeds for us all.

So at 11am, I went and knocked on the door to see whether they were just having a little bit of a lie-in and didn't want to be bothered.

As I opened the door, I could see that my dad was extremely ill and he was staggering back to the bed. Mum was laid on the bed and I could tell that something was seriously wrong with him.

He just said to me that he was really, really poorly and he needed me to go to a pharmacy. He was very lethargic, vomiting a lot and just felt really, really ill.

I thought the pharmacy wouldn't be able to do anything. I knew that there was something wrong and they needed some more medical attention so we called for a doctor at the hotel.

CPR efforts

The first doctor had a look at them both, panicked a little bit and called for a second doctor, so there were two doctors working on them.

They didn't really see to Mum because they could see that Dad was more ill and he took priority.

They tried basically to save his life and they couldn't. They did CPR on him but nothing could help him, nothing could save him.

[He declined] very rapidly - you could see in a matter of minutes you could see him dying. I was there watching it the whole time.

Mum had no idea what was going on - she was oblivious to what was actually happening because she was so poorly.

'I thought Mum would survive'

Kelly Ormerod, left with her mother, says her parents were healthy

Once my father died, my mother was taken to the clinic in the hospital where they put her on a drip to try and get some glucose into her… because I think it was the dehydration from the vomiting.

We arrived into the hospital in Hurghada - she was wheeled straightaway into the emergency room where doctors were working on her but unfortunately again, I think it was half an hour that she was there, [then] they came out and told me she was dead.

It was awful and they both died exactly the same way. I saw my dad pass away and I thought Mum would survive and she didn't, she went exactly the same way.

I was feeling distraught.

I don't think it was specifically an individual's fault for the death,

"I think when they went back to that room that evening there was something in that room that's actually killed them, whether they've inhaled something that poisoned them, I don't know, I can only have my opinion on what's gone on but there's something that happened in that room that killed my parents.

'Fit and healthy'

While I was on holiday, a lot of people get the "Egyptian tummy" - they didn't even get that. They had no vomiting, no diarrhoea.

The evening before we went to bed, we were all having a lovely family meal and they were fit and healthy.

The weeks before that, they were absolutely fine, carrying on normal activities, working, going to the gym, things like that.

Absolutely fine, no issues.