Christchurch engineer Joseph McGirr denies supplying drugs to American polo star Lauren Biddle before her death

An engineer is alleged to have given an American polo star ecstasy before he died in the spa pool of a Christchurch house on a hill, then tried to bury his clothes.

Lauren Mikaila Biddle, 22, died suddenly during a small gathering at a hillside home in the Christchurch suburb of Clifton on October 22, 2018.

Biddle, a promising American polo player, had been in New Zealand for just over a week.

He planned to stay in Clifton, working and playing polo, until March of last year.

His family was shocked by the death of their “vibrant, fun-loving” girl.

Joseph Douglas McGirr, a 39-year-old civil engineer from Christchurch, was arrested after Biddle’s sudden death on his property.

McGirr was charged with supplying Biddle, and another man, with the controlled Class B drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy, and with attempting to pervert the course of justice by concealing Biddle’s clothing after his death.

He pleaded not guilty and a jury trial began this morning in Christchurch District Court. McGirr admitted to an accusation of growing cannabis today.

The Crown laid out its case to the jury this morning, saying that at the center of the matter is a small social gathering that went “horribly, tragically wrong.”

McGirr, Biddle and two others had been drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis while relaxing in the pool at McGirr’s spa, the court heard.

In the middle of the night, a man left, leaving McGirr, Biddle, and another man.

Crown prosecutor Kerry White says McGirr offered Biddle and the other man ecstasy.

McGirr, the Crown alleges, prepared and provided three lines of crushed ecstasy on a breadboard, which they all smelled through a small tube.

The trio continued to sit in the spa pool until “very late at night.”

At one point, when the other man returned to the spa, McGirr told him that Biddle was dead.

The man walked over to Biddle, shook her, and when she didn’t respond, he pulled her out of the spa pool and tried to feel for her pulse. McGirr said again that she was dead.

The man tried to give CPR and wanted to call an ambulance, but the Crown alleges that McGirr “got mad and said, ‘No.'”

Desperate, the other man loaded Biddle into his car and backed up the steep driveway, where he exited at the top and called 111. He continued with CPR.

Emergency services arrived quickly, but Biddle was pronounced dead on the side of the road around 1.20 a.m.

Meanwhile, The Crown says McGirr was back at the house “sorting out evidence from the party,” cleaning up bottles and cans, and dumping Biddle’s clothes and belongings across his balcony into a overgrown section below.

Then he carried them further down the hill, says the Crown, and, using a shovel, covered them with leaves and hid them.

When police first arrived on the scene around 2 a.m., McGirr was not at home, the court heard. The Crown says that he was likely burying Biddle’s clothes.

At 3:30 am, McGirr appeared from the bushes in front of the house and made himself known to police, the court heard.

He was taken to the central Christchurch police station, where he gave a statement and told police what he had done to Biddle’s bag and clothes, Crown says.

Around 12:30 p.m. that day, McGirr returned to the address with the police and led them to the overgrown section and pointed out the partially buried bag, clothing and shoes that he said belonged to Biddle. Police also found seven cannabis plants still attached to garden stakes, but which had been uprooted.

The Crown says that the seven cannabis plants are important because they show that they knew that the police were going to come to their home to investigate their death and most likely search their property.

The Crown says Biddle was very drunk, almost four times the drunk driving limit.

And he was found to have a high concentration of MDMA in his system that was around 15 times higher than “normal recreational use” of the drug.

It was such a high level that it was “well within the range of fatal concentration previously found,” the court heard.

An autopsy found that the cause of his death was likely a drug overdose that caused sudden cardiac arrest.

The trial, before Judge Tom Gilbert, is expected to last all week.