THE INQUEST into the death of 14-year-old schoolboy Brian Rossiter yesterday heard from a witness who said she saw gardaí using force when they arrested Brian and another youth on the night before he was found unconscious in Clonmel Garda station.
Annmarie Hannigan told Cork City Coroner's Court that she was with her friend Edel Sheehan when she saw Brian being arrested at about 9pm on September 10th, 2002, on suspicion of having committed a public order offence.
She and Ms Sheehan were on Mitchell Street when she heard shouting and three young fellows, Brian Rossiter, Anthony O'Sullivan and Daniel Leahy, came running up the street.
Brian Rossiter and Anthony O'Sullivan both had two-litre bottles of cider and all three were drunk and disorderly, said Ms Hannigan. Later she saw Daniel Leahy's father, Martin, trying to calm him and take him home.
Mr Leahy asked the women to ring the Garda. Ms Sheehan rang the station and within minutes a garda, whom she didn't name, arrived on the scene and, with assistance from Mr Leahy, arrested Daniel Leahy.
Garda Tom Phelan took Daniel Leahy away in a patrol car. The unnamed garda went after Brian Rossiter and Anthony O'Sullivan who had gone on to Gladstone Street, said Ms Hannigan. Garda Pádraig Jennings arrested Anthony O'Sullivan and the other garda arrested Brian near the Piper Inn, said Ms Hannigan.
Both officers had the two youths grabbed from behind with their hands help up behind their backs.
"Nothing happened between Brian Rossiter and Anthony O'Sullivan and the gardaí . . . the gardaí did not hit anyone," she said in her statement, which was read to the inquest jury.
Ms Hannigan said that some things she had said to gardaí had not been included in her statement. The gardaí "were using force, they were rough when Brian and Anthony were trying to get away", she said in direct evidence.
Earlier, Dr Bernie Rouse said she got a call between 9.15am and 9.30am to say gardaí were having difficulty rousing a prisoner.
She hurried to the station where her colleague Dr Ann Mulrooney and nurse Anita O'Carroll were carrying out cardiac massage on Brian Rossiter who was lying on the floor outside a cell.
"He was totally still . . . He was warm and there was a sense of not knowing what had happened," said Dr Rouse.
She assisted in a full cardiac pulmonary resuscitation and she began to feel a pulse even though Brian did not start breathing. Brian had two black eyes and there was bruising on his chest. She did not see abrasions on the left side of his face, though that wasn't to say they were not there.
Cross-examined by Aidan Doyle, for the Rossiters, Dr Rouse said Brian's top had been removed but he was clothed from the waist down so she didn't see any purple bruising to his penis.
She remembered Dr Mulrooney saying she had seen vomit when she arrived and she had cleared Brian's airways before commencing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, using a Vent-Aid to try and get him breathing again.
