Alan Donoghue stormed out of Dublin District Coroner’s Court, forcing the coroner to adjorn proceedings – his son Brandon Buckley died in October 2023
The father of a young man who died two years ago stormed out of his son’s inquest after claiming he had never properly identified the teen to the authorities.
The incident occurred at Dublin District Coroner’s Court as coroner Aisling Gannon tried to read a postmortem on how Brandon Buckley, 18, died into the court record. She was forced to adjourn proceedings after an outburst, in which Alan Donoghue branded the inquest “a joke” and claimed that “someone is after f**king up”.
His outburst came after a law enforcement officer asked for a six-month adjournment of the inquest, saying that a file on the Garda investigation into the death had been forwarded to the DPP.
Mr Buckley died at the premises of the Swooshed sneaker store that he operated in Dublin 1 on October 27, 2023. A death notice placed by Mr Buckley’s family on the RIP.ie website stated he died “tragically due to the pressures of life.”
Another Garda officer told the inquest that Mr Donoghue had identified the deceased to him at the store premises on Abbey Street Upper, but Mr Donoghue took issue with this statement.
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Interrupting the court registrar, Mr Donoghue said he did not recall making any statement to gardaí in relation to his son’s death. The coroner pointed out that gardaí do not necessarily take a statement as they seek to be “the least intrusive” as possible to family members at a very distressing time, Dublin Live reports.
Mr Donoghue admitted he was at the scene but claimed he had identified his son to gardaí before he had died and told them that Brandon was in the premises. “Nothing was said after that,” he added. He also said he had been told not to go to the morgue.
Mr Donoghue said he was not disputing that it was his son but claimed proper procedures were not followed. Asked by Ms Gannon after a number of interruptions if he wanted the court to investigate his son’s death, he replied: “For the fourth time, yes.”
The coroner replied that the inquest could only proceed if the court could be satisfied about the identification of the deceased and if Mr Donoghue accepted that he had engaged “at a distressing time” with gardaí in relation to identifying his son.
She also expressed bafflement as to why the witness had become “aggressive”. In a series of exchanges, Mr Donoghue told the coroner that he thought the inquest process would be carried out to the letter of the law but had just discovered it was not.
“He was not formally identified by anyone in his family as far as I know,” he remarked. He continued: “I don’t know what is going on.”
The coroner explained gardaí had not engaged in a formal identification in order to cause Brandon’s relatives the least distress. However, she said that if there was “no understanding” in the court about the identification of the deceased the inquest could not continue.
Then the coroner observed that she did not think progress could be made at the hearing, and Mr Donoghue replied: “Is that it? Can I get out of this box?”
He added: “I haven’t a clue. I’ve never been in this situation before. I’m trying to figure out what is going on but someone is after f**king up.” When Ms Gannon asked him not to use such language in court, he retorted that he was told it was not a court and she was not a judge.
The coroner directed him to stand down from the witness box after he remarked: “If you’d like to finish, I’d like to go.” Before storming out from the courtroom, Mr Donoghue said: “It should be the f**king guards in that stand. It’s unbelievable You’re not a judge – it’s a joke.”
Addressing the deceased’s mother and other family members who remained at the hearing, Ms Gannon said she was going to adjourn proceedings due to the “level of upset”.
She asked gardaí to liaise with the family about the future course of the inquest and said she would be happy to hold another sitting either before or after Christmas.
She acknowledged that Mr Donoghue was grieving for his son.