Housemates cleaned up scene of fatal accident before Gardaí arrived

Coroner for West Galway, Dr Ciaran MacLoughlin, questioned each man individually, trying to understand why they had contaminated what was initially thought to have been a murder scene.

“When you find someone dead in unusual circumstances, with blood in the vicinity, you call the Gardaí,” he said to one of them.

“Everyone should know that, so that the scene can be preserved, so that the death can be fully investigated, so that his relatives would know that everything had been done properly, otherwise they would need to ask questions like I’m asking you today.”

Due to the suspicious nature of the death, State Pathologist, Professor Marie Cassidy, carried out the post mortem examination on the remains of the 46-year-old man. She found no evidence of foul play, however, and said that the cause of death was likely accidental and avoidable, but had been exacerbated by alcohol intoxication.

Shane Minihan had not been seen by his housemates for the two days between October 30 last and the morning he was discovered.

On the morning of November 1, one of them (27) arrived back to the house in Tirellan Heights at 8.30am, having worked the night shift in Medtronic.

He discovered glass on the floor, from a door panel, in the sitting room and blood on the bannister, both of which he cleaned up. He then went into his landlord’s room to check on him, but found him unresponsive and cold to the touch.

He said that there was blood on the side of Mr Minihan’s head and on his bed.

When asked by the Coroner why he had not called for help, he said that his phone was dead. The Coroner then asked why had he not gone outside to alert a neighbour, to which he replied: “Shane’s friend called (by chance) ten minutes later – he called someone.”

The second housemate, a 24-year-old student, was in the house when Mr Minihan was found dead. He did not think to ring the emergency services either, and said that it struck him as more important to ring the man’s family first, considering that he was already dead. He did not have their contact details, however, so he rang a mutual friend. He then cleaned blood off the wall.

“We didn’t want his sister to see his room like that,” he said.

Again the Coroner asked why he had not contacted the emergency services first. The young man replied that he thought it better to inform the man’s family, considering that he was dead, and once the Gardaí got involved they would have restricted access to the house.

“It was not better,” the Coroner replied.

When Gardaí were finally informed, by Mr Minihan’s friend, who called unexpectedly to check up on him, he was pronounced dead at 10.41am.

“He had a large laceration to his head, and he was in rigor mortis,” Dr Dennis Higgins noted.

Garda James Lynch told the court that he found drops of blood leading up to Mr Minihan’s bedroom. The house was sealed off, and the scene preserved.

The State Pathologist was called to carry out the post mortem examination, and she subsequently produced an eight-page report. A summary of her findings were read into the record – most importantly, that the source of the bleed was an incised (clean) wound to the right of his forehead, consistent with a cut from glass.

“He likely fell and hit off the glass door, which caused the injury to his face and ear,” Professor Cassidy stated.

“He was considerably intoxicated at the time of his death, which would be associated with a lack of co-ordination and unsteadiness – he would have been unaware of the danger to life that the injuries posed.”

The Coroner, who had read the State Pathologist’s conclusions into the record in her absence, advised the Minihan family that it was reasonable to suggest that their brother had died during the early hours of November 1.

Dr MacLoughlin concluded that death was caused by haemorrhage from an incised wound to the scalp, which was sustained in a fall.

He offered his sincere sympathies to Mr Minihan’s two sisters and his brothers in law on the very tragic circumstances of his death.