EDMONTON — Cassandra Williams' body was dying, even as the 14-year-old lay in her hospital bed, hooked up to life support.

An overdose of ecstasy Friday night shocked her small body so badly that her heart stopped beating in the middle of a West Edmonton Mall underage party. Paramedics restarted it and raced her to hospital, but it failed again soon after.

As she faded Saturday afternoon, a nurse turned off the visual monitor, and her mother sat quietly by her side.

Soon, a nurse said it was over.

"All I said was, 'I know,'" said Angie Eyre, her mother. "They didn't have to tell me. I could feel it.

"Her body took over. They let her go on her own, really."

Another 14-year-old girl who was at Friday night's Rock 'n' Ride party, a monthly youth event at the mall's Galaxyland amusement park, said drug use there was rampant.

"Security just doesn't realize that pretty much everyone is on ecstasy," she said.

Most teens stuff the drug down their shirt or their pants so it isn't found when they enter. The girl said everyone her age who goes to the mall knows where to go if they want ecstasy — and if they don't, they can learn in five minutes.

"People would come up to you and say, 'Hey, do you want E?' . . . or you could go up to anybody — anybody — around the area and find out."

A West Edmonton Mall spokesman would not comment Sunday.

Brandon Ferko and Chris Courtenay, both 16, said they were with Cassie and her friend at a West Edmonton Mall underage party when Cassie's friend pulled a napkin out of her bra. In it were 12 pink pills of triple-strength ecstasy they said they bought while waiting in line. Each girl took six.

The friend survived. Cassie didn't.

Cassandra, or Cassie as her friends called her, was an independent-minded girl who was into pink and images of skulls.

She was the "eyeliner queen," said her mother, cradling a recent school photo Sunday evening. She brushed her thumb against her daughter's chin.

It was a reshoot. Cassie wasn't satisfied with the first, and Eyre stayed up late the day before to help paint the bottoms of Cassie's hair pink.

If Cassie called in sick for school, it was only because she slept in too late to properly straighten her hair, Eyre said, smiling.

And they talked about drugs. Just last week, Cassie told her mother she would never take them.

"What, are you crazy?" Eyre said he daughter told her. "All that stuff will wreck my complexion."

"Why she took it, we'll never know," said Sunday.

The suspected drug seller was arrested downtown Saturday afternoon.

He passed out during the arrest but was in stable condition that evening.

The recent deaths have left many teens freaked out, said a Leduc mother, Sylvia, whose son, 14, was also at Rock 'n' Ride last Friday.

He was offered ecstasy, but an adult was with their group.

"West Edmonton Mall needs to step up and figure something else out," she said. "It's scary, way too scary. Young lives are snuffed out in an instant."

Thinking of the young victim's mother, she said, "it just sends a pang through my chest."