‘MY SON SAID TO ME THAT BABY MARY WAS NOT OKAY’
KATHLEEN Connors McDonagh held out her arms in despair to the jury, as she demonstrated how her baby niece was put into her arms after being rescued from a fire. She sobbed as she recalled: ‘When she was handed to me, I didn’t know whether she was dead or alive.’
These chilling words echoed around Dublin Coroner’s Court yesterday, with several family members distraught at the horror of what they were hearing.
The thought of six-month-old Mary Connors being rescued from a burning portacabin, only to later pass away in hospital, was too much to bear.
Draped in a large cream scarf and leather jacket, with her hair tied loosely back in a ponytail, Kathleen, 30 – a sister of Thomas Connors, who died in the blaze – was helped to the stand. Her most difficult moment was when she described how her sister-in-law Katie handed her baby Mary from the burning home.
‘I didn’t feel anything, it was like being handed a pink blanket,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even really look at the child, I don’t remember her crying.’ She added that ‘to me, she was alive’, because she told one of her own children ‘to look after her’.
Kathleen had gone to help her family in the early hours of September 10, 2015, when the fire broke out at Carrickmines Halting Site.
She was visibly shaking as she recalled the sheer terror everyone felt, and Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane asked her if she wished to take a break, but she declined.
‘Thomas, my son, is four,’ she said. ‘I put Mary on the bed [in Kathleen’s home], I ran back to help.’
But Kathleen said she then realised her own home was on fire when she saw her son sitting on the steps at the front of their portacabin with thick black smoke billowing out from behind him.
‘By the time I even got back, the entrance... was gone – the whole front door,’ she said. ‘Then when I looked back I just see the smoke and the fire coming out the front door. Thomas was there he was saying, “Mary is not okay”.’
Earlier, the inquest had heard that Kathleen was too distressed to give oral evidence, but had provided the gardaí with a statement. She was one of three witnesses who had, at first, declined to give evidence, citing how stressful it was.
However, as Dr Cullinane rose for lunch at 11.40am, after asking the jury to take an hour’s break, the court heard Kathleen would take the witness stand.
At 11.50am, Kathleen appeared behind the glass of the main door into the courtroom, with three people around her.
She then quietly made her way into the witness stand with the help of Lisa Algan, who is representing the Connors family. Several times, Ms Algan, who stood beside her at the witness box throughout her 25 minutes in the stand, comforted and kissed her in an effort to ease her suffering.
After lunch, mother-of-two Katie Connors, 19 – who is married to Jim Connors, a brother of Kathleen – also gave evidence. She told of how she had been handed baby Mary after John Keith Connors – who was only 14 years old at the time – bravely climbed into the burning portacabin to rescue his family.
The soft-spoken mother sat quietly in the witness box as she described how the family fought to save ‘as many as they could’. ‘We did our best,’ she said. ‘We really did.’
‘I know you did and I know this is very hard,’ said Dr Cullinane.
The hearing continues.