Heavy drinking warning after man ‘fell like plank’ and died
Christy, 73, suffered severe injury
A CORONER warned of the dangers of heavy drinking after a dad-ofthree who fell backwards “like a plank” hit his head and later died.
Christy Henderson passed away before midnight on December 19, 2021 following the incident in Dun Laoghaire, South Dublin, a few hours earlier.
A sitting of Dublin District Coroner’s Court heard the 73-year-old had been seen falling over in the town.
In a statement read out at the hearing, witness Lorenzo Borza said he had observed an unknown male fall “like a plank” on the street that evening. Mr Borza said he also heard a sound like “a loud crack” before seeing blood coming from the injured party’s head.
Mr Borza alerted the emergency services and an ambulance arrived around 20 minutes later. The deceased’s daughter, Michelle Henderson, said she had been contacted by her mother at around 8pm to inform her that her father was in St Vincent’s University Hospital.
The inquest heard his vital signs declined and Mr Henderson, from Dun Laoghaire, was pronounced dead at 11.35pm. A postmortem found levels of alcohol in his system were 212mg per 100ml of blood – over four times the legal drink-driving limit.
Coroner Dr Crona Gallagher recorded the cause of death as a severe head injury resulting from a fall with alcohol toxicity as a contributory factor.
Returning a verdict of misadventure, the coroner said: “People with that amount of alcohol in their system are prone to falling.”
Offering condolences to his family, the coroner observed the speed of his death must have come as “a great shock”.