A friend of 14-year-old schoolboy Brian Rossiter today told an inquest that Brian told him he had been assaulted by gardai after they were both arrested for a public order offence on the night before Brian was found unconscious in a cell at Clonmel Garda station.
Anthony O’Sullivan told Cork City Coroner’s Court how he was arrested along with Brian after 9pm on the night of
September 10th 2002 and put in cell 4 at the Garda station and was in the cell when he heard Brian being brought in and put in cell 3.
“You would have to go to the door to shout. I just had a few words. I told him that they [the gardai] were after beating me and he said they were after beating him,” said Mr O’Sullivan.
He said he had heard Brian shouting and roaring when he was being brought in.
Mr O’Sullivan said the following morning gardai woke him up in his cell and asked him to come with them to Brian Rossiter’s cell to try and wake his friend whom he found lying on the concrete bunk with his hands across his chest.
“I saw Brian facing in towards the wall, shaking, very loud breathing through his nose ... he was on the concrete plinth and the mattress was on the floor...he was as white as a ghost, I called him four or five times and shook him two or three times.”
Mr O’Sullivan, who said he still didn’t know to this day why the gardai had got him to go and try and wake Brian, told how he was later brought into the interview room by gardai and asked had Brian taken drugs, saying that he was in hospital and the doctors needed to know.
Mr O’Sullivan said he told them Brian had drunk two litres of cider, and later when gardai brought in his father to ask him what Brian had taken, he told them Brian had smoked a joint but that he had not taken any ecstasy tablets.
Garda Ann Marie Coogan, who was the member in charge in Clonmel Garda station on the night that Brian Rossiter, Anthony O’Sullivan and a third juvenile, Daniel Leahy were all arrested, told how all three were intoxicated and abusive as she was trying to process them.
Brian Rossiter had been arrested by Garda Padraig Jennings and he was out on control when he was brought into the public office of the station at 9.41pm, shouting abuse and striking out trying to free himself and he refused to sign the custody record, she said.
“He was shouting and roaring and very uncooperative. He told me to ‘F**k off, that I was a f**king pig just like the rest of them',” said Garda Coogan.
She said that while he had two black eyes, the bruises did not look fresh and she didn’t think he needed medical attention.
Garda Coogan said Brian Rossiter continued to shout and roar from his cell and when she checked on him through a hatch in the cell door, he was sitting on a window ledge in his cell and when she asked him to get down, he refused and continued shouting.
Garda Gerry Canty, who took over from Garda Coogan as member in charge at 10pm, said he checked on Brian Rossiter at regular intervals and he continued shouting and roaring in his cell despite being asked to quieten down up but he had stopped by 11.30pm.
When he checked on Brian at 11.55pm, he was asleep and he continued to check at half hourly intervals until 5.30am and on each occasion he found Brian asleep, said Garda Canty, adding that he never entered the cell at any stage during the night.
Garda Elaine Corkery said she passed by cell 3 at about 5.45am and the occupant, whom she later learned was Brian Rossiter, started shouting abuse at her, saying “You’re a f**king bitch, you’re nothing but a f**king bitch.”
The inquest resumes in December.