Inmate swallowed batteries in care protest before dying of brain injury

An inmate at Mountjoy Prison resorted to swallowing batteries in a protest to get medical attention, an inquest heard.

Kenneth Doona, aged 33, from School St, Dublin, was found in his cell that night and died two days later at the Mater Hospital from a hypoxic brain injury.

Dublin Coroner’s Court heard he was in “agony” with a hernia for two to three months before his death, making “numerous” complaints to prison staff and medics. Another prisoner at the time, Paul Connolly, said that in the early hours of April 14 last year — the day of the death — Doona was “shouting at medical staff and officers” for pain relief and “all they would give him was paracetamol”. He saw the hernia several times, he said, and it was the “size of an egg”.