Heavy gate rolled off metal rail and crushed Sienna, 5
Inquest hears heartache of losing ‘little princess’
‘I knew something had happened’
THE harrowing moment when a five-year-old girl was crushed to death by a faulty gate that her desperate mother struggled to lift off her was relayed to an inquest yesterday.
Sienna Joyce had been playing outside her family home at the The Ward, Ashbourne, Co. Meath, when the heavy gate rolled off its rail on top of her.
Her mother Maria Joyce ran outside when she heard a loud bang and saw her son trying to lift the gate.
Mrs Joyce’s screams alerted Sienna’s father, David Joyce, and his father David Sr, both of whom had been working nearby.
They rushed to the scene and it took a number of people to lift the gate in order to free the child. But little Sienna was in a serious condition. An ambulance was called and Mr Joyce and the child’s grandfather drove to the White House pub on the old N2 to meet the ambulance. Sienna was rushed to Temple Street Children’s Hospital where she was later pronounced dead.
A postmortem gave the cause of death as severe head injury due to being crushed.
Yesterday, at the inquest, Sienna’s father described her as ‘my life, the air that I breathed’, adding: ‘We are devastated to have lost her but nothing will bring her back.’
The coroner’s court heard how Sienna was playing outside her home on June 27, 2016, when she came inside and spoke to her mother, Sienna who was took making a sandwich sandwiches. back outside.
Mrs Joyce said she then heard ‘the loudest bang’ and saw her son trying to lift the gate. ‘I ran and tried to lift it but I couldn’t. I screamed for help.’ Mr Joyce Jr said: ‘It was about 6.20pm when I heard screams. I just knew something had happened to one of my children.’ Sienna had just finished her first year of school and died just weeks before her sixth birthday. Her death is not the first tragedy to visit the Joyce family. She was related to four-year-old Logan Joyce, who drowned at the Nationally Aquatic Centre in July 2012. She was part of a large settled Travelling family living in the area.
After the inquest, her father said: ‘She was our little princess. She was such a girly girl, she loved to dress up, she loved her long curly hair. She was a little character, she could light up a room... everyone loved her.’
The court heard how the heavy sliding gate, which was made of solid timber with a steel frame, was once electric but was now manual and was undergoing maintenance work. It derailed from its sliders and fell, trapping Sienna underneath.
Gardaí investigated the tragedy and a file was submitted to the DPP but no prosecution was directed. The court heard maintenance work had been carried out on the gate two weeks previously and Mr Joyce was waiting for this work to be completed.
Consulting engineer Damien Power described the gate as a single-leaf sliding gate with rollers mounted on a metal track.
Mr Power said there was no physical stop for the rollers present and therefore nothing to stop the gate rolling out of its tracks. ‘The top rail should have been fitted with a fundamental physical stop, it could have been fitted between the gate and the pillar,’ he said.
Mr Power said this was the second fatal incident he had investigated involving this type of sliding gate, and said such gates present a hazard unless a stopping mechanism is fitted.
Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane returned a verdict of misadventure, noting ‘the risk that existed which sadly contributed to the events surrounding Sienna’s death’.