‘I KEEP GOING OVER AND OVER WHY MY SON IS IN HIS GRAVE’
THE mum of barman Cyran Stewart “wanted to die to be with him” after his awful death in the lift of a Swansea bar, she has revealed. Anguished Elizabeth Galbraith has been tormented for years by the talented 20-year old’s fatal accident at 3am in the city’s Walkabout bar.
The 55-year-old, who now lives in Scotland, said that the time between his death in February 2014 and his body being released for burial that April, followed by the nearly three-year wait for his inquest had “destroyed my life and torn us all apart”.
She said: “I haven’t dealt with it. I’ve been anxious all the time. It’s destroyed my life and torn us all apart.
“When he died, I had to wait until April 15 [2014] to bury him. I was torn apart. It was just agony. I just wanted to die. I wanted to be with him.
“For two years I was just existing. No one was around to come to the house. My husband literally guided me. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have been able to move forward.”
Mrs Galbraith stayed with friends and in hotels during the two-week inquest into his death, which concluded on Wednesday that his death was accidental.
The hearing at Swansea Coroner’s Court had been told that Cyran was transporting eight heavy chairs in a service lift at the Walkabout when one of the chairs moved and crushed him against the inner wall.
The former student had overridden the lift’s safety gate in order to get that many chairs in, and was trapped for more than 31 minutes before firefighters were able to release him. He died in hospital four days later.
Mrs Galbraith said she could not help but believe that the delay freeing him had been crucial.
“I thought had Cyran been removed from that lift he might have stood a chance. My life has been turned upside down,” she said.
The inquest jury of five women and six men concluded that Cyran’s death was accidental.
The foreman told the hearing that they had concluded a chair leg had caught on the ledge of the ground floor, causing the furniture to shift and crush Cyran against the inner side wall of the lift.
The hearing at Swansea’s Civic Centre previously heard that the bar closed at 3am and Cyran, who worked at the venue full-time after quitting his computer science degree at the University of Bradford, was helping to clear up after the popular Carnage student night.
The alarm was raised after a colleague heard a scream and real- ised Cyran was trapped.
Cyran was buried on April 15, 2014, at Shifnal Cemetery in Shropshire. His mum said he had two post-mortems.
Mrs Galbraith said she had since moved from the home where she had raised Cyran in Shropshire and now lives in Alexandria in west Dumbartonshire with husband David.
She said: “I used to live in Telford in Shropshire. I lived in the same house for nearly 20 years, since 1998. But I moved last year.
“I moved because I got married to my husband, David.
“All the memories were there. In the loft, there was all his [Cyran’s] toys and books from school that all said A+. He was such a brainy lad. He died as innocent as the day he was born.
“I’ll never be able to hug him, to hold him, to see him get married or have kids. I’m wiped out by it. I just feel, after the whole thing, what was it for?
“I don’t know when the pain is going to stop. “He was knackered. It was 3am. “I keep going over and over, why my son is in his grave.
“It took two years to get back to normal in my life.”
The two-week inquest heard from several of Cyran’s colleagues who said they had also been