Man died from €25 heroin overdose

A GEORGIAN national who bought a bag of heroin for e25 outside a Cork city shopping centre died after taking an overdose, an inquest heard yesterday.

Gardaí had to liaise with the Georgian embassy in London and with Interpol to identify the dead man because he had used several identities while in Ireland, Cork City Coroner’s Court was told.

His identity was finally confirmed as Gela Kobiashvilli, 31.

Mr Kobiashvilli and a fellow Georgian national, David Karitchasvili, with an address in Cobh, bought the heroin while standing outside Paul Street Shopping Centre at around lunchtime on October 1, 2008.

Mr Karitchasvili said they went to an empty room on the ground floor of an apartment building on the Western Road to inject themselves.

“The next thing I remember is waking up in hospital at 3 or 4am,” he told the inquest.

It was established that Mr Karitchasvili had called another Georgian friend to the scene, who in turn, alerted the emergency services.

Paramedic Dave Walker arrived at the scene at around 2.45pm and found Mr Kobiashvilli in a collapsed state and unresponsive. He said Mr Karitchasvili was crawling around the floor.

They stabilised both men for transfer to the South Infirmary.

Gardaí sealed off the flat and recovered drug paraphernalia and an Irish Prison Service identification card bearing Mr Kobiashvilli’s face, but with the name, Puskus Nerijuna.

Mr Kobiashvilli never recovered and was pronounced dead on October 8.

Days later, two unidentified Georgian nationals walked in to a local funeral home with a Georgian passport, bearing the name Gela Kobiashvilli, and enquired about buying a coffin for a friend who had died.

The funeral home director became suspicious and alerted gardaí, who launched a major investigation to confirm the dead man’s identity.

They established he had used his Georgian passport to enter Ireland in October 2006 under the guise of attending a judo competition. Records held by the Garda National Bureau of Immigration showed that he applied for asylum some time later.

However, Garda Ian Cahalane told the inquest that Mr Kobiashvilli was arrested in June 2008 while trying to leave for Canada using a false Lithuanian passport with the name Puskus Nerijuna.

He was subsequently detained in Cloverhill Prison for three months. He never produced formal identification and he was issued with a prison ID card bearing the Lithuanian name. It was this card which gardaí found at the scene of the overdose.

Garda Cahalane said after exhaustive enquiries, gardaí are satisfied that the dead man is Gela Kobiashvilli.

A postmortem established the cause of death as narcotic overdose. The assistant city coroner, Philip Comyn, recorded a verdict of death due to misadventure.

Mr Karitchasvili told the inquest that he has been deeply affected by his friend’s death.

“It was very hard for me. I lost a good friend and got very depressed. I never went back to the bad things after that,” he said.