The daughter of a 52-year-old woman who died in a fire at her home in Ballyfermot phoned her mother while the house was ablaze but could only hear her breathing before the line went dead, Dublin City Coroner's Court heard yesterday.
Kathleen Pedley, a mother of 11, woke her son and his cousin with shouts that the house was on fire at about 10pm on November 4th, 2004. The two men managed to escape from the burning building while Ms Pedley went back into her bedroom and returned to bed. She died some time later of smoke inhalation.
Ms Pedley's son, Stephen Keenan, and his cousin, Patrick Joseph Lee, had spent the evening smoking cannabis downstairs after returning from the city centre with their prescriptions of physeptone, a heroin substitute, the court heard. Mr Lee also drank about five cans of beer on the night.
A statement read out in court for Mr Lee, who was not present, said that he had also bought heroin that day.
A forensic examination at the scene found no evidence of an electrical fault and concluded that the fire was possibly caused by an unextinguished cigarette downstairs.
Joanne McHugh told the court she telephoned her mother when a neighbour rang to tell her the house was ablaze. "I heard her breathing like she was trying to talk and then the phone went dead," she said in a statement.
The court also heard evidence from Ms McHugh that her brother and cousin "seemed to be on something". Ms McHugh was out for the night when the fire started.
Mr Keenan told the court he had tried to save his mother but she had closed her bedroom door and it seemed as though she had "barricaded herself in".
He then covered his face with a T-shirt, descended the staircase and stumbled out the front door. "I tried to save my mother, I really did," he said.
Mr Lee escaped by jumping from the window ledge of the upstairs bedroom he had shared with his cousin, the court heard. His statement said the house was "black with smoke and the floor was warm" when he was wakened by Ms Pedley's shouts.
Both Mr Keenan and Mr Lee had been living on the streets before Ms Pedley had allowed them to move into her home at Cherry Orchard Avenue, Ballyfermot.
On the night of the fire Mr Keenan had turned off the electric fire, unplugged a phone charger and switched off the TV before the two men went upstairs to bed.
Mr Keenan also told the court he had smoked five cannabis joints but they would not have caused the fire because, like roll-up cigarettes, they extinguish themselves.
Cigarettes had been smoked downstairs by Mr Lee, he told the court, "but I'm not trying to blame him".
Dublin deputy city coroner Maria Colbert returned a verdict of accidental death. She said Ms Pedley had gone to bed at about 5.30pm on the night of the fire. She had diabetes and also suffered from asthma, and it was not unusual for her to go to bed at this time.