Daughter phoned mother trapped in death blaze, inquest told

The daughter of a 52-year-old woman who died in a fire sobbed tonight as she told how she rang her mother as she was trapped in the burning house.

Joanne McHugh told the Dublin City Coroner’s Court how she rang Kathleen Pedley’s mobile phone at the family home in Cherry Orchard Avenue in Ballyfermot after a friend told her a fire had broken out.

Ms McHugh said: “I rang my mother’s phone I could hear her breathing like she was trying to talk. Then the phone went dead.”

Her brother, Stephen Keenan, earlier told how himself and a cousin managed to escape from the house after the fire broke out at around 10pm on November 4, 2004.

Mr Keenan, who said his mother had just taken him in off the streets where he had been living, said he and his cousin had smoked cannabis downstairs in the house before heading to bed at around 9.30pm.

Around a half an hour later, he said, they awoke when they heard his mother shouting the house was full of smoke.

Mr Keenan said Mrs Pedley had then retreated to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

The inquest heard his cousin escaped through the bedroom window while he ran downstairs with a t-shirt over his face.

Tears rolled down his face, as he said: “I tried to save my Mam I really did.”

Det Gda Graham Kavanagh said the fire crew had found Mrs Pedley, who was a mother of 11, in bed in the upstairs bedroom at the back of the house, and she was pronounced dead in St James’s Hospital around 11.30pm.

The inquest heard she was in poor health, as she was a diabetic and suffered with severe asthma.

After she retreated to the bedroom, Det Gda Kavanagh said: “It appears she got into her bed.”

A report from Det Gda Jeremiah Moloney, a ballistics expert, said it appeared an electric heater was not plugged in at the time of the accident.

Mr Keenan said he had turned off the electric heater and unplugged a phone charger before he went to bed, as his mother had always taught him to be safety conscious.

Det Gda Kavanagh said there was no conclusive evidence as to what had caused the fire.

He said: “The only logical conclusion that I could arrive at was that the fire was caused by an unextinguished cigarette.”

A post mortem report revealed Mrs Pedley died from smoke inhalation, and the Deputy Dublin City Coroner, Maria Colbert, passed a verdict of accident death.