A 19-year-old Cork man hanged himself days after splitting up with his girlfriend, an inquest heard yesterday. The youth, from the Mayfield area of the city, had met his former girlfriend by chance earlier in the day. She told him she had met someone else.
"At first he took it badly, but later he seemed to accept it," she said in a statement to the coroner's court. She got out of the taxi, spoke to a neighbour, and did not respond when she heard her former boyfriend calling her. At 4.50 a.m. he telephoned her home but she did not answer.
Hours later the youth's parents found him hanging from the roof of a shed behind their house. He left a note for his former girlfriend. The inquest heard that the couple had been inseparable since they began dating in October 1995 until they had an argument in early February this year.
The friend who shared the taxi home said he spoke to the deceased in the street after they got out of the taxi "and he seemed fairly normal". Cork City Coroner Mr Pat Dorgan said: "It's unfortunately a frequent occurrence that this court has to hear, where a young person, under real or imaginary stress, feels they cannot cope with the pressures of life." He returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence.
It is the policy of The Irish Times in reporting certain inquests to protect the identities of deceased persons and/or their families.