Fall teenager's organs 'helped five others'
The organs of a 13-year-old boy who died after falling through a roof helped improve the lives of up to five other youngsters, an inquest heard today.
Dublin City Coroner’s Court heard Darren McNally of Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, was playing on the roof of a supermarket storage shed with three friends when the accident happened.
Darren was rendered unconscious after he fell 18-feet through a Perspex sheet to the ground below. He died in Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital six days later on September 27, 2003 from severe head injuries.
Coroner Dr Brian Farrell commended Darren’s parents Olivia and Ray McNally for their generosity at such a traumatic time.
He said: “Beaumont hospital have written that at the time of Darren’s death you granted consent for organ harvesting. They said four or five patients have benefited as a result.”
Darren’s friend Alan Brady, 14, told the inquest they had all been at the Credit Union’s 40th Anniversary party in the town that Sunday September 21, 2003.
He said they went down a lane off the main street and into a yard. He told the inquest that at the top of some steps they saw a pallet stacked against the wall of a shed.
Alan said four of them climbed up on the Perspex and galvanised steel roof to play.
“The game of tig was to run from one roof to another,” he said.
The inquest heard one of the boys had walked on the Perspex and it had cracked.
“Darren said ’to watch and now walk about on it again as it was weak stuff’,” Alan said.
He said Darren had been jumping on the roof, he didn’t think he saw the Perspex piece and he fell down onto the floor.
Kyle Meegan, 14 said: “I heard a crack and he was gone, then I heard nothing.”
The boys told the inquest they climbed down from the roof and began trying to open the locked shed door.
Kyle ran to get help and he met Darren’s sister Mara.
The boys then managed to hold part of the door open, they wrapped a jumper around his head, and carried him out.
Garda Valerie Campion of Carrickmacross station told the court Mara came into the station in a hysterical state and she alerted an ambulance and a local doctor.
She said the boys were all greatly shocked and crying.
Garda Campion said: “I could see the left side of his head was injured and I comforted him as much as possible.”
Darren was rushed to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Co Louth, but was later transferred to Beaumont Hospital.
The inquest heard he was at the lowest level of unconsciousness possible for life and he did not wake up before he died six-days later.
A post-mortem revealed he had sustained severe head injuries, including contusion of the brain and a fractured skull, in the fall.
Garda Campion contacted the supermarket storage shed’s owner Gus O’Gorman and examined the area.
She said: “The main entrance was padlocked.”
Garda Campion told the inquest the boys went into the yard through “undergrowth one would have had to literally get down on your hunkers. It was possibly either a laneway or a part of the property not used in normal circumstances”.
The court heard the way the boys got in had not been blocked off.
Dr Farrell ruled it was an accidental death. He said it was not a legal requirement but he would inform the Health and Safety Authorities about the accident at the shed as it was in the public’s interest.
He said: “Over the last few years there have been a number of inquests where young persons have died in similar circumstances so I believe it would be in the public interest to do that.”
