Tragic Vacation: Teen’s Fatal Allergic Reaction in Morocco Sparks Restaurant Safety Debate

Arriving on vacation in Morocco with her mother Aicha, a 56-year-old Moroccan, in June 2024 to visit her family and celebrate her good grades in her first year of economics at the University of Exeter, Lily King died after food poisoning at the hospital. On the last day of their vacation, June 19, 2024, she and her mother had gone to dinner at the Maya and Lounge restaurant in Rabat, where they had already eaten before. While things went well on their previous visit to this restaurant, this was not the case on June 19, 2024. Speaking in Arabic, Lily’s mother had been "explicit" with the restaurant staff about her daughter’s allergies, which included dairy products, fish, shellfish, sesame and nuts, and about "what she could and could not eat," said Michael, 73, Lily’s MRE husband.

"I explained it [to the waiter] in Arabic three times: ’Be careful, she is very, very allergic,’" Aicha recounted. "Yeah, don’t worry, we’re careful," the waiter had replied. She had ordered a simple meal of grilled chicken and fries not mixed with oil for her daughter, but the waiter would have brought her a meal of chicken, vegetables with fries and a sauce on the side. The young woman’s mother said she had noticed in the darkness of the restaurant that the vegetables looked like shrimp, and had then immediately asked the waiter to remove the meal. But he had assured her that they were actually cooked carrots only in olive oil, and that there was nothing dangerous on Lily’s plate. As she continued the conversation with the waiter in Arabic, her daughter had taken a bite of the carrots. And, within a few minutes, she had begun to have a severe reaction. "Lily said: ’it’s itching, I gave her a Piriton and she went to the bathroom. After her return, she had said: ’I can’t breathe.’ I started calling the ambulance and we went out so she could try to breathe," Aicha had recounted. "She had itching in her throat, which turned into nausea, stomach cramps and breathing problems," Lily’s father had specified. The young woman’s mother will add: "We used the Epi Pen. But I left my bag inside the restaurant, it contained my passport and everything else, I can’t leave it, and I went to get it back. I told the restaurant: ’My daughter is dying outside.’ He told me to pay the bill before leaving." The restaurant staff told Mrs. King that she "could not leave without paying the bill," her husband Aicha had added.

In the aftermath, the MRE says she called for help, but no one came to her rescue. "I’m screaming, there are security guards at the door, but no one is helping me, nothing," she had said in tears. She had desperately tried to call an ambulance. As the vital minutes ticked away, she had been forced to take her car and take Lily to the hospital. According to Aicha, it had taken Lily 30 minutes to get to the hospital, by which time she had already had a heart attack. Informed, Mr. King and his eldest daughter from his first marriage rushed to Morocco. His wife and he were forced to make the heartbreaking decision to let Lily go. "They kept her alive for three days and did another test on her, but no brain function was detected, and we had to let her go." My only child, "died on my shoulder. She told me: I love you, goodbye" and then she died," Aicha had confided in tears.

A year later, the MRE is struggling with this painful separation: "Neither the waiter nor the doctors spoke English. Without Arabic, it would have been impossible for me to make myself understood. It’s my mother tongue and yet, I couldn’t get the care Lily needed... My daughter was my best friend, everything to me... Without her, our life is nothing." She adds: "I was so careful with everything Lily ate. I cooked everything at my mother’s and brought it to the hotel so we could eat together. We never ate at the hotel. The only thing I ordered was tea." Her husband Michael is also struggling to recover from this premature death: "We want to warn anyone traveling to countries where the laws are different from those in the UK: trust no one. [...] We had 18 wonderful years with Lily. Never, not even in our wildest dreams, would we have imagined losing her like this."