A DAY trip by a group of Belfast schoolboys to Butlins Holiday Camp at Mosney, Co Meath, ended in tragedy when one of the pupils fell through an open train door, an inquest in Belfast heard yesterday.
The coroner's court heard how 13 year old Ciaran McCoy, from the De Ia Salle School, fell onto the track from an open carriage door near Newry on the Dublin to Belfast train on June 26th last year.
School friends said they had seen Ciaran before the accident with his head leaning out of the window and when the door suddenly flew open Ciaran, who was holding on to a metal bar on the inside of the door, was heard shouting he could not, hold on any longer. He was hit by bushes and the branch of a tree on the embankment of the railway line.
A Northern Ireland railway engineer, Mr Peter Scott, who examined the door, said the lock had no defects and could not have been opened unless someone turned the handle on the outside of the train.
The inquest resumes today.