AN 11-year-old boy who was found hanging by his 10-year-old sister had told her a short time earlier that he wanted to die, an inquest has heard.
The boy, who lived in west Dublin, was found by his sister on the evening of June 21st, 2007, Dublin County Coroner's Court heard yesterday.
The children and their three-year-old sister and a 10-year-old friend, were alone in the apartment at the time. Their mother had left an hour earlier at 6pm to visit a friend and to do some shopping for the evening meal.
She had just arrived at Lidl at 7pm when she received a call from her daughter saying that something terrible had happened, that her brother's eyes were closed and he wasn't moving.
The mother immediately contacted the emergency services and neighbours who went to the apartment straightaway.
The boy's sister told gardaí that her brother had told her that evening that he had wanted to die and that he had said the same thing a week previous, but she thought he was only "messing".
A postmortem by State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy found the boy died from hanging and coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty recorded an open verdict. "There's no clear evidence that he intended to take his own life," he said.
His mother told the court that her son, who had arrived in Ireland just two years prior to his death, was a good student, did very well with his schoolwork and played sports. She said he was having problems adjusting to the culture in Ireland.
"In Africa, you are free to walk around anywhere, but here it is different so I would have to explain that . . . "
She said her son "wanted to live by the African culture and he wanted me to cook African food and I would try to explain to him that he had to learn to adapt to new ways of living", she said.
"He was generally a happy child. He wasn't depressed or angry. He was never close to his father so he wasn't sad leaving him. He was very close to me," she added.