A teenager pleaded desperately for help as he lay trapped in front of an oncoming train, an inquest heard today.
Ryan Quinn (14) had got his hand lodged in a cattle grid in Portrush, Co Antrim, Northern Ireland, in January 2009.
Moments before his death, he made a frantic call to his father Ivan, claiming he had been attacked in nearby McLaughlin’s bar and was being chased.
“Daddy, you are going to have to come quickly,” he said. “I cannot get out, my knuckle is stuck.”
He was hit by the last train from Coleraine to Portrush and suffered fatal injuries.
The teenager, from Slemish Place, Coleraine, was three times over the legal limit when he died and had been at McLaughlin’s bar celebrating his half brother Dean Quinn’s 18th birthday.
A statement from his father at Coleraine Coroner’s Court said: “He was starting to get hysterical and the more he got hysterical he was begging me, he was screaming down the phone.”
The Public Prosecution has told the dead boy’s family there is insufficient evidence to bring a case against two men. Police have been unable to prove how the St Joseph’s College, Coleraine, pupil came to be lying on the line when the train hit him.
His family is convinced he was murdered.
Mr Quinn, speaking from Maghaberry Prison via video link, added: “My son was not just my son, he was my best friend and I knew him probably better than anybody.”
Train driver Ian Cairns said he believed he had seen somebody running away from the line a split second before the collision. “I suddenly had a flashback, it was so vivid it gave me goosebumps,” he said. “I am convinced there was someone else on the track prior to the train hitting Ryan Quinn.”
His first statement to police made no reference to seeing anybody else.
Mr Cairns recalled the body on the track.
“I saw a person appear to be holding themselves up with their arm, the lights of the train illuminated the face and you then saw the left arm raised,” he said.
Coroner John Leckey said it was a terrible situation. “One can understand why panic would have entered the equation on seeing the oncoming train with the lights no doubt would have increased the sense of panic, a real nightmare situation,” he added.
PA