Friends asked bar staff to put shots in pint when man was in toilet, court told

GRAHAM PARISH seemed to react suddenly to the consumption of eight shots in a pint glass after earlier consuming large quantities of alcohol without it having any apparent effect on him, a manslaughter trial heard yesterday.

One of the two accused, barman Aidan Dalton, told gardaí that Mr Parish seemed fine at about 10.30pm, despite having been drinking since about 6.30pm and having consumed a large quantity of pints and a number of shots at that stage.

However, Mr Dalton said that some 30 minutes after Mr Parish drank the pint glass of eight shots, he met four of his friends bringing him upstairs, two either side of him to support him as he was a big man, 6ft 3in tall with a beer belly.

“I met him on the stairs and I seen the state of him – the drink must have hit him all of a shot,” Mr Dalton told gardaí, adding Mr Parish was earlier talking coherently and seemed to be aware of what he was doing when drinking the eight shots.

Mr Dalton told gardaí in his statement that Mr Parish, who was nicknamed Shaggy, had been drinking pints since about 6.30pm and was later joined at about 7pm by five other Englishmen and they stayed drinking pints steadily until about 10pm.

“I couldn’t say how much they drank but towards the end of the night, they started to race a few pints – they were betting each other about how fast they could down a pint – one of them said ‘Shaggy’ could down a Guinness in two or three seconds.”

It was Mr Parish’s 26th birthday and when he went to the toilet, one of his friends asked him (Mr Dalton) to put a shot of vodka in his drink and he did so but Mr Parish didn’t seem to notice the vodka as he downed the pint very quickly.

Co-accused Gary Wright told gardaí that at about 10.30pm, one of Mr Parish’s friends asked him to put a double vodka in Mr Parish’s pint while he was in the toilet and he agreed to do so as he knew they were celebrating Mr Parish’s birthday.

“One of the lads asked for a double vodka and asked me to put it in the birthday boy’s drink – I was a bit iffy but I did it – I didn’t see any badness in it. They were just having a laugh among themselves,” he told gardaí.

He later told Mr Dalton it was okay to put eight shots into a pint glass when asked to do so by Mr Parish’s friends. “I looked at the birthday boy – he was a tall broad guy and looked okay – he wasn’t falling around at that stage,” said Mr Wright.

Mr Wright said Mr Parish didn’t have any more to drink after the pint glass of shots and when he was leaving work at midnight, he asked night porter Philip Mahony to check on him in an upstairs function room as he had “a good bit to drink”.

The case continues.