A COBBLER who died in his shoe repair stall was locked in Cork’s English Market overnight before being found dead the following morning.
Patrick Joseph Harrington (60), of Beech Road, Muskerry Estate, Ballincollig, is understood to have died before the busy shopping market in the city centre closed for the night on March 26th last.
Mr Harrington, a popular market personality, was discovered on the floor of his repair shop when his employee, seamstress Bernadette Dooley, arrived for work shortly after 8am on March 27th. She found the door to the shop partly open, which she said was unusual. “I found him lying face down on the compressor and I went to a nearby stall to ask for help.”
Market caretaker Marcin Zelechowski said he was locking up the market at 7.20pm that evening and he saw the shop door was open and the lights were on.
“I locked the dead man in the market. If it was now, I would have gone in and checked and I would do that in the future, but at the time, it was a hard situation for me to be in. I did not know it was my job to do this,” Mr Zelechowski said.
He locked the gates of the English Market at 7.30pm, unwittingly leaving Mr Harrington inside. Garda Colin Crowley arrived at Paddy Joe’s Shoe Repair stall at 8.30 the following morning, where he found Mr Harrington. He was pronounced dead at Cork University Hospital at 10am on March 27th.
An autopsy found Mr Harrington had lethal levels of alcohol in his blood and that he suffered from a severely damaged liver and from heart disease.
Cork city coroner Dr Myra Cullinane said his death most likely came about as a result of a fall.