AN OPEN verdict has been recorded at the inquest into the death of a man who drowned in Milltown just before Christmas.
The body of Alan Kelly (46) of Patrick Doyle Road, Milltown, Dublin, was found in the Dodder river near Clonskeagh bridge on December 12th, 2010.
His inquest, held in Dublin yesterday, heard he died from drowning.
He was last seen alive the previous Saturday by his work colleague Christy Murphy.
His boss, John Cussen, a manager at Eircom, raised the alarm on December 14th when Kelly failed to turn up for work.
Mr Cussen told the inquest it was unusual for Kelly, who worked as a technician with Eircom, not to show up for work.
Mr Cussen sent another Eircom employee to Kelly’s house to check on him. That employee said the lights were on in the house but there was no answer. Mr Cussen became worried and contacted the Garda.
The previous Friday, Kelly had been drinking with his friend Kieran Finn in the Dropping Well pub on the Milltown Road.
The two had six or seven pints each and Kelly told Mr Finn his grandmother would have been 100 that year.
He also said he was looking forward to his girlfriend coming over in February.
Kelly walked home with fellow Eircom employee Mr Murphy. It was the time of the heavy snow, so the two men took their time walking home.
Mr Murphy said he kept asking Kelly to walk on the grass on the way home as he was worried he might slip on the snow and ice.
He was walking ahead and looked back at one stage to check on Kelly, but couldn’t see him. He went back down the road calling his name but heard nothing.
“I just thought he’d stopped for a pee, as he often did that, so I continued on my way home.”
Kelly’s body was discovered the following day by a man out walking along the river. He was wearing just his boots and boxers.
A postmortem carried out by consultant pathologist Dr Anthony Dorman gave the cause of death as drowning.
Garda Ray Lyons said he doubted Kelly’s clothes had washed off him as he was wearing boots and it would have been hard for the trousers to come off over the boots, despite the high water from the snow and melting ice.
Dublin city coroner Dr Brian Farrell said he was returning an open verdict as there was no conclusive evidence that Kelly had killed himself or that it was a completely accidental death.
The coroner said: “His clothes were never found. We feel he must’ve taken them off beforehand.”
Mr Kelly’s father, Michael, said his son had never shown any signs before of wanting to take his own life and that he doubted very much that he would do that.