A pattern of telling stories at school

TRAGIC heroin addict Dean Lyons was born in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght in April 1973, the fourth in a family of six children.

From an early age, his parents, John and Sheila Lyons, sensed that he was having learning difficulties, a fact borne out when he went to national school. He made friends and got on well with teachers but struggled academically.

An educational psychologist assessed him as borderline mentally disabled but it was noted that he had good verbal skills which, it is thought, hid his intellectual difficulties and made it more difficult for people dealing with him to recognise his vulnerabilities.