A 19-YEAR-OLD suffered fatal injuries when he fell from the rear of a waste disposal truck on which he apparently piggy-backed a lift home after a night in town.
Rory O’Connor, Highfield Park, Dundrum, Dublin 14, was rendered unconscious when he impacted with the road outside shops at Arbourfield Terrace, Windy Arbour, Dundrum Road, after jumping or falling from the back of the waste disposal truck.
The alarm was raised shortly after 5am on June 28th, 2007, by taxi driver Christopher Murphy, who saw a body on the road outside the Costcutter store, an inquest at Dublin city coroner’s court heard yesterday. Mr Murphy contacted emergency services and Mr O’Connor was brought to St Vincent’s hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A postmortem found he died of a laceration of the heart with severe head injuries, consistent with falling from a truck. A toxicology screening was positive for ecstasy and a high level of alcohol, at 242 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood.
The court heard Mr O’Connor was out with friends in town. He was separated from his friend Joshua Delaney at about 3.45am. A Garda inspection of CCTV footage identified Mr O’Connor getting off the right rear side of a refuse truck, property of Greyhound Waste Disposal, which was travelling at about 43km/hour.
The truck was not fitted with a footplate,which meant Mr O’Connor would have been standing in the back of the truck,which would have made getting off more difficult.
Neither the driver of the DAF waste disposal truck, Paul Green, nor his helper, John Paul McCabe, were aware of any incident. There were no suspicious circumstances.
A jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure under the direction of the coroner Dr Brian Farrell, to take into account the effects of ecstasy and alcohol.