One swig of cocaine-contaminated drink was enough to kill Joromie Lewis in Southampton

Joromie Lewis, 33, immediately spat out the Cole Cold Pear-D fruit drink but there was so much of the class A drug in the bottle he had already ingested an "overwhelming" amount of cocaine.

He grabbed the drink from the storage garage of the import/export business he casually worked for based out of a house in Moorlands Crescent, Bitterne, Southampton.

And the inquest heard the company, Kelly's Shipping UK, had not even ordered the drink but that it had arrived by surprise along with a mix of soft and alcoholic drinks.

Juanette Allen, who runs the business with partner Phillon Kelly, said they had ordered drinks from St Vincent for the cousin of a previous Hampshire-based customer.

And the police have been unable to trace said customer because they used temporary phones and email accounts to make the order.

She said: "We never ordered Pear-D. When we collected the drinks after they had been through customs, we made contact with the customer and the drinks they ordered were collected by two people on Novsmber 27."

The Pear-D was left in the garage along with alcoholic drinks ordered for friends and retailers.

Ms Allen said father-of-one Joromie, who was a part time driver for the business, grabbed a drink from the garage when visiting Moorlands Crescent after work on December 5.

She said: "He drank a mouthful but once he tasted it he spat it out and said it didn't taste right.

"He ran to the sink to spit it out and tried to make himself sick.

"He said to me he wanted to take it to Southampton A&E to get it tested."

Miss Allen, also an admin worker for the Royal Navy, added: "All I knew was he came into the kitchen with a bottle in his hand. I presumed it was a different drink, Buster. Our relationship was that if he wanted a drink from the garage he could take one without asking."

And Ms Allen said she believed Joromie, of Kings Road, Gosport, thought the company was being taken advantage of to move drugs to the UK after he told Mr Kelly "Don't let them use you" when the latter returned home.

Joromie then left for Royal South Hants Hospital with co-worker Carlos Deabreu but collapsed on arrival and was transferred to Southampton General Hospital.

His condition quickly deteriorated and he died at around 11.35pm that night.

Basil Purdue, a Home Office pathologist, said that the cause of death was cocaine intoxication, adding that toxicology tests showed that Mr Lewis had a ''very high'' cocaine level of 21.3mg per litre of blood, with a fatal level being as low as 1mg.

 The drink would have contained 1g of cocaine in 3ml of liquid.

 He compared the level to that of a drug smuggler who died after four cocaine packages burst in his stomach, leaving him with a level of 4mg/l.

 Dr Purdue said that as a ''naive user'' - someone who was not a cocaine user - the drug would have had a greater effect, and added: ''We are dealing with an overwhelming overdose of the drug.''

He added that one of Mr Lewis's colleagues put some of the liquid on his tongue and it caused it to go numb for three hours.

Police investigated the incident and DS Glynn White told the inquest they discovered a shipment of 2,000 bottles, including Pear-D and Busta, another soft drink by the same company arrived in Southampton in late November but they had never been able to trace them.

He added they had investigated the company and found it to bd unorganised and working mainly for friends on a casual basis.

He said: "The company is clearly not organised and reflected a casual approach.

"Samantha McDadi is the name the cousin of the customer gave but that was not someone we could identify.

"The telephone they used was only used for a short period of time and they used a foreign email address that led to a dead end."

He added: "We had our suspicions through other enquries but we could not confirm anyone called Samantha McDadi exists and I'm not convinced they do."

Test revealed the bottle was a genuine Pear-D product that likely had cocaine added and was then re-sealed.

The Food Standards Agency put out a warning at the time and withdrew the product from retailers.

Joromie has been described as a devoted family man who was a member of Bridgemary Family Church, formerly Jacob's Well Family Church in Gosport.