Strychnine death first in decades, says pathologist

THE state pathologist told an inquest into the death of a young man who died of strychnine poisoning after collapsing at a facility for juvenile offenders that she had not dealt with a case of strychnine poisoning in three decades.

Anthony Kelly, 20, of Snowdrop Walk, Darndale, Dublin 17, was rushed by ambulance from St Patrick’s Institution, where he was an inmate, to the Mater Hospital shortly after 9pm on May 31, 2006, Dublin City Coroner’s Court heard.

State pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy, who carried out a postmortem, told the inquest that strychnine, a poison which was used in the past for poisoning rodents, was identified in Mr Kelly’s blood and in the gastric contents of his stomach and was responsible for his death.