A homeless man died days after he was set alight on a Dublin Street in September 2004, an inquest has heard.
A woman who knew Anthony Gill (52) said she noticed he had no shoes on his feet while he was sitting on the steps of the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Westland Row, Dublin, where she worked.
"He told me a fellow he was with poured petrol on his legs and stole his shoes," said Pauline Brennan, adding that he was very upset and looked ill.
"He said 'that fellow I do be with set fire to me, he threw petrol on me last night'. So I asked him 'where?' He said 'down my legs'." Several witnesses told Dublin City Coroner Brian Farrell that Mr Gill had told them he had been set alight by another homeless man he often hung around with, who was from Northern Ireland and nicknamed "Stumpy".
Paul Stevenson said on September 4th, 2004, as he walked down Westland Row towards the dental school at around 2.45pm to sit an exam, a homeless man stepped out in front of him. Mr Stevenson said the man's shirt end was on fire. "He remarked his friend had set him on fire." Mr Stevenson put the fire out with a sleeping bag. He said he approached a second man sitting in the doorway between numbers 19 and 21 on Westland Row and asked why he had set the man on fire.
"He had a cigarette lighter in his hand, he just looked back at me and smiled, he seemed in a different world." The man was possibly drunk, he said.
"When putting out the fire I did not get the smell of petrol." A friend of Mr Gill, Brian Corr, said he heard a man from Northern Ireland threaten his friend on one occasion.
Mr Gill, who had a problem with alcohol, told Mr Corr, who was visiting him in hospital, that the Northern Ireland man had set fire to him.
Patrick Nulty, who works in St Brigid's food hall on Holles Row in Dublin, said he questioned the man from Northern Ireland about how Mr Gill had received his injuries.
Mr Nulty said: "He said 'I tried to set him on fire'. At the time he was drunk and I thought he was messing."
There was a statement from Christopher Flanagan, now deceased, which was read to the court. It said the Northern Ireland man said someone had given him small white tablets which had caused him to burn the shirt off Mr Gill. "He told me he didn't know whether he was coming or going when he did it," Mr Flanagan's statement said.
Francis Gill, a brother of the dead man, told the inquest in a statement that the family had not been in contact with his brother for about five years, when his mother died and the home in Dublin had been sold.
Geraldine McAuliffe, a nurse working with a charitable organisation for the homeless, Trust, which Mr Gill had attended for about five years said she noticed the burns on September 7th and sent Mr Gill to St James's Hospital.
Prof Marie Cassidy told the inquest that Mr Gill died on September 17th, 2004, from acute respiratory distress complicated by hospitalisation for body burns. She said he had third degree burns over 5 per cent of his body, including his chest and back.
Garda Paul Murphy from Pearse Street Garda station told the inquest he had interviewed the man nicknamed "Stumpy" on October 14th, 2004, in the investigation into the incident.
Mr Farrell adjourned the inquest until next February and issued summonses for several material witnesses including a Francis McGrinder and Roberto Rascio, who had failed to appear. - (PA)