Man fatally injured in fall while preparing for mother’s wake

A Co Roscommon man died while attempting to erect a street lamp to cater for mourners at his mother’s wake, an inquest has heard.

Patrick Bowens (44), a father-of-three from Cloonfad, Ballyhaunis, was taking a 20ft street lamp off the back of a trailer when the accident happened.

Mr Bowens had gone to another man’s house to collect the light and brought it to his home on a trailer behind a jeep on October 19th, 2015. His mother had died the previous day, Dublin Coroner’s Court heard.

“I met Pa and arranged to erect a street light for his mother’s funeral,” witness Christopher Swanick said. “He picked up the light which was between 18 and 20ft long with a concrete cube at the bottom. Pa drove the jeep and I drove behind him in my van.”

Mr Swanick said the concrete cube fell to the ground sending the street lamp up in the air as the two men tried to move it off the trailer.

“We were going to position it where we needed the light. We were lifting it off with the aid of a strap. It came to the edge of the trailer and then it stood up in a pincer effect,” he said.

‘Lifeless’

Mr Bowens was thrown into the air by the momentum of the falling lamp and hit the trailer on the way down.

“He fell lifeless to the ground,” the deceased’s brother Michael Bowens said in his deposition.

Patrick Bowens was rushed by air ambulance to Beaumont Hospital where doctors found he had sustained a skull fracture with bruising and swelling to the left side of his brain. He died two days later.

The cause of death was hypoxic ischemic brain injury due to severe head injury due to a fall.

The man’s wife Elaine Bowens passed away just weeks before her husband’s inquest.

Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane returned a verdict of accidental death and offered her sympathy to the Bowens family on the “terrible series of tragedies” that has befallen them.