Gardaí told friend to try and wake up Brian

A FRIEND of 14-year-old Brian Rossiter who died two days after falling unconscious in Clonmel Garda Station said gardaí got him to try and wake Brian in his police cell on the morning after both were arrested.

Anthony O’Sullivan told the inquest in Cork that after they were arrested within minutes of each other on the night of September 10, 2002, he called to Brian: “They’re after killing me.”

Brian called back to him, “they’re after killing me too”. That was the last time he heard from his friend.

The following morning, he was woken in his cell and asked to go down to another cell to try and wake Brian.

“The mattress was on the ground,” Mr O’Sullivan said in his deposition. “Brian was lying on the concrete bench. He was shaking. His arms were folded across his chest and he was breathing quickly through his nose. I couldn’t wake him up.”

During questioning, the witness said that Brian’s eyes “opened slightly and closed again” and “that was basically it”. His friend was “white as a ghost,” he said. “He was like someone who had come out of a cold place.”

He was then brought back to his cell.

Brian Rossiter died two days later in Cork University Hospital, never having regained consciousness.

Asked if he noticed any other difference in appearance in Brian’s face from the previous night, Mr O’Sullivan said: “No.”

Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane asked the witness why he thought he was asked by gardaí to try and wake Brian. “I didn’t think anything and I’m still thinking to this day why they brought me down,” he said.

The previous night he had been in a friend’s flat with Brian and others. Both had two-litre flagons of cider, and two cannabis joints were passed around, he said.

Later, after another friend, Daniel Leahy, was arrested on the street for an alleged public order offence, he and Brian ran away.

They parted company at the Piper Inn, Mr O’Sullivan went in the door and Brian into the car park. He was arrested there and brought to the Garda Station by Detective Garda Quinlan.

The next morning, some time after being asked to try and wake Brian, he was interviewed by gardaí, who asked him if Brian had taken any drugs.

“I was saying ‘no, no’ and they were saying, ‘he was, he was, he’s in hospital, we need to know’.

“I was saying, he wasn’t.”

He was crying during that interview, he said, and his father arrived and he eventually told gardaí Brian had a few puffs of cannabis and had been drinking alcohol the previous night.