A teenager died after reportedly drinking home-brewed spirits at an 18th birthday party in south Auckland yesterday.
Tyson Devon fell asleep after drinking too much and when his friends tried to wake him they realised he had stopped breathing, 3 News reported this evening.
"He was drinking homebrew," said his friend Joshua Simon.
"Tyson is normally pretty good for drinking ... No one knows what happened, might have been the sun, could have been the heat."
Senior Sergeant Spencer Matthews said: "Normally people have a sleep, they wake up the next day and all they are suffering is a hangover. In this case a young boy has died and he won't be waking up again."
An ambulance spokesman said emergency services were called to the address in Papakura about 6.30pm yesterday and found a young man intoxicated and unconscious.
He was in cardiac arrest and attempts to resuscitate him failed. He died at the scene.