A man jumped to his death from the sixth floor of a Dublin hotel after discovering his girlfriend had died from a cocaine overdose in the hotel room they were sharing, an inquest has been told.
David Dunne (26), Lindisfarne, Clondalkin, plunged from the sixth floor of the Tara Towers Hotel, Booterstown, on August 28th last when he realised that his girlfriend, Karen Power (25), was dead, Dublin County Coroner's Court heard.
The couple took cocaine together in their hotel room that morning. When Ms Power fell unconscious and Mr Dunne realised she was dead, he took his own life. Before the incident Mr Dunne told the hotel's duty manager, Sophie Brianne: "Please do something. She is my life."
The couple, who had attended a wedding in the nearby Radisson hotel the previous night, had celebrated the birth of their first child, Callum, just six weeks earlier.
Postmortems confirmed that Ms Power died suddenly from cocaine intoxication and that Mr Dunne had cocaine in his system at the time of his death. Mr Dunne died from multiple injuries due to a fall.
Dublin county coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty recorded a verdict of misadventure in the case of Ms Power and a verdict of death by suicide in the case of Mr Dunne.
Ms Brianne told the inquest she became aware that there was something seriously wrong that morning when emergency services contacted the hotel to say that a male guest in room number 605 on the sixth floor had phoned them on his mobile to say his girlfriend was dead.
Ms Brianne went immediately to that room where she found Mr Dunne in an agitated state.
"He was very nervous. He said, 'She is dead'. I asked him could I check. I saw a lady lying on the right-hand side of the bed, with a pillow under her head. She had long, dark hair and was between 25 and 30 years old. I checked for a pulse in her neck and wrist, but I couldn't feel anything.
"She had saliva, like foam, coming from her mouth. I asked him had she taken drugs and he said they had taken cocaine 10 or 15 minutes ago. He was very nervous and under the influence of drugs."
Ms Brianne left the scene to get a first-aid kit and told Mr Dunne to go back into the room.
When she returned about two minutes later, there was no sign of Mr Dunne and Ms Brianne asked the night receptionist, Milan Becka, to search the hotel.
Mr Becka told the inquest that when he got to the sixth floor, he saw Mr Dunne sitting on the window ledge. He went immediately to room 605 where he told Garda James O'Leary and Garda Brian Dodd that he had discovered Mr Dunne on the sixth-floor widow ledge.
When the gardaí arrived at the scene, Mr Dunne jumped.
Garda O'Leary told the inquest that Mr Dunne was outside the building, "holding on to the window frame. He looked over his left shoulder at us and immediately let go of the ledge and jumped."
Liam Keogh, a paramedic with Loughlinstown ambulance service, told the inquest that he had received a call from central base on Townsend Street at 7.56am to say that someone staying at the Tara Towers had made a 999 call to say his girlfriend was dead.
The ambulance arrived at the Tara Towers at 8.08am and found Ms Power in room number 605.
"Her body was still warm, but she had no pulse, there was no rise and fall in her chest," Mr Keogh told the court. "We administered CPR and put cardiac pads to see if there was a heart rhythm. There was no heart rate whatsoever.
"I said to the guards to find her boyfriend to find out what she had taken. One of the guards said he knew where he was. He went away. Then he came back. He said he had jumped."
The coroner told the inquest that people needed to be aware of the dangers of cocaine. "It can be fatal in very small doses. You don't have to take much of it. You can die the first time you take it."