A WELL known horse racing official, who is confined to a wheelchair, has recalled how his disability prevented him helping a man who drowned in the River Shannon last year.
Veterinary surgeon John Powell told the inquest into the death of a 35-year-old Limerick man that he was sitting in his car outside a restaurant on George’s Quay on November 25 last when a man tapped on the window.
Mr Powell, who lives in Nenagh, told coroner Dr Tony Casey that he was outside Azur restaurant around 3:20pm “when the man tapped my window and said to ‘call 999 – I’m going to jump in’”
“I said ‘don’t do that’, but he went over to the wall and climbed the railings.”
Mr Powell said he could see the man hanging by his hands, “and then he just dropped.
“I couldn’t do anything to help him as I am disabled,” he recalled in a deposition to the court in which he also sympathised with the man’s family who were present at the inquest.
“He was wearing a wooly hat and a jacket and he spoke with a Limerick accent. I’d never met him before that,” Mr Powell told Gardaí.
Garda Sean O’Hagan said he responded to Mr Powell’s call that the man had entered the water at George’s Quay.
The inquest heard that the 35-year-old man, who lived in a hostel on Clare Street in Limerick City, was taken from the water by rescue responders and CPR was carried out minutes later. He was unresponsive and was later pronounced dead at the University Hospital Limerick.
Coroner Dr Tony Casey read from the post mortem report which concluded that the man died as a result of drowning and that there were elevated levels of alcohol and drugs present.
An open verdict was recorded “as nobody knows what triggered off the final act” Dr Casey said as he expressed sympathy to the man’s family.
