Inquest into the death of [Redacted] Williams

Female·sodium nitrite poisoning

A 70-year-old school teacher and community advocate with motor neuron disease (MND) died by sodium nitrite ingestion on 27 April 2023. She had explicitly expressed wishes to end her life and explored available options. Palliative care practitioners offered palliative sedation therapy (PST) at home, but conflicting medical advice about duration (2 weeks vs a few days) and eventual inability to provide home-based PST due to resource constraints left Ms Williams dissatisfied. She had sought voluntary assisted dying (VAD), which was unavailable in the ACT at that time. The coroner found no matters of public safety and no preventable errors. The case highlighted gaps in end-of-life options for terminally ill patients without access to VAD, leading to the ACT subsequently implementing a VAD scheme in November 2025. No clinical negligence was identified.