Accidental deaths of two Limerick farm boys
Jack Lyons, aged 14, was electrocuted as he was power-hosing a cowshed on his grandfather’s farm at Aughalin, Ballingarry, on July 18, 2013.
David Roche, aged two, was drowned when he fell into a bucket containing about seven inches of water on the family farm in Mountcollins, on July 13, last.
Limerick coroner Dr Tony Casey recorded accidental verdicts in respect of both accidents.
The hearing into the death of Jack Lyons was told that he was cleaning the inside of a cowshed at his grandfather’s farm with brushes with a friend, when he decided to get a power hose. After using the power hose for nearly an hour, he received a fatal electric shock.
David Boland, inspector with the Health and Safety Authority, said the boy had plugged in the flex in an old milking machine area. About 15m of the 100m flex was unwrapped. The flex was usually used in hedge-trimming. Mr Boland said the power hose had a plastic lance and a metal barrel and the boy was electrocuted by a current which came through the metal barrel he was holding. Jack Lyons died from sudden cardiac arrest.
Mr Boland said the hose was for heavy power usage and the cable was not strong enough for the power going through the flex. As a result, the flex overloaded and this generated excessive heat which melted the plastic insulation around the inner core wiring of the flex. This resulted in a crossover of the live wire to the earth wire, and everything attached to the earth wire became live. Mr Boland said there was no residual current device (RCD) on the socket circuit onto which the power hose was plugged.
He said the RCD trips a system very quickly and would more than likely have prevented the accident.
The hearing into death of two-year-old toddler David Roche was told he was playing on the family farm in Mountcollins on July 13 last when he went missing.
His mother, Brigid Bergin, said she had gone upstairs to check on David’s sister. On coming down, she could not find David and went to where he was playing. She started to shout for him and ran out the front door.
The boy’s father, Michael, joined in the search and went out onto the road.
Ms Bergin said she then found a bucket near a sand pit where Michael had been mixing cement the previous days. There was six or seven inches of water in the bucket and David had fallen head first into it. She got him out of the bucket and started CPR but there was no response.
Pathologist Dr Elizabeth Mulcahy said the child died from drowning.
