Ex-INLA man’s organ donation saved four lives

A former INLA man, who shot himself in the head in a garda station, helped save four lives after his heart, lung and kidneys were donated to patients.

Dublin Coroner’s Court heard yesterday that the transplant patients all had successful operations following Colm Peake’s death.

A family friend said Mr Peake always carried a donor card but the family had also given permission. Coroner Brian Farrell praised the family’s courage and public spirit in the face of tragedy.

An open verdict was delivered following the inquest into the death of 40-year-old Mr Peake, who walked into Fitzgibbon Street Garda Station in February this year and shot himself in the head with a Walther 9mm pistol.

The inquest heard the Belfast man had the equivalent of seven pints of beer in his system at the time. His girlfriend, Ann Marie Dowdall, in a statement to the court, told of the couple’s last days together in Kilkenny and Belfast.

When they returned to Dublin on Monday February 18, his last words, as he stepped out of a taxi cab, were: “I will ring you later, love”. Hours later, Mr Peake was lying fatally injured on the Garda station lobby floor. He died two days later at the Mater Hospital.

One witness who was in the station, Keith Daly, told the inquest that Mr Peake shouted: “I’ll show you now you bastards” before shooting himself.

Mr Peake, with an address at Clareville Grove in Glasnevin, but originally from the New Lodge in Belfast, had been on the run for six years after failing to turn up for a court hearing on firearms charges. A warrant had been issued for his arrest but not executed.

Mr Peake served six years in jail in the 1980s for possession of explosives. He was also convicted, later overturned, of murder and INLA membership on the discredited evidence of supergrass Harry Kirkpatrick. Seven of the 27 convicted on the evidence were later killed in internal feuds.

Ms Dowdall told the inquest her boyfriend was drinking heavily and suffered depression in the months before his death.

“He talked a lot about his friends who died during the Troubles. He loved his family and always talked about them,” Ms Dowdall said.

The weekend before his death, the couple went to Kilkenny for the weekend. He spent much of it drinking and the couple made some attempts to get in touch with two different residential clinics but there were no beds. He was told to attend Dublin’s Howth House for assessment the following Thursday.