A WOMAN died after she was impaled on railings following a fall from the second-floor window of a nursing home, an inquest in Cork heard yesterday.
Maura Looney (82), from Congress Road, Turners Cross, in Cork city, had spent a difficult first night at the care centre. She was admitted to the nursing home on December 31st, 2009, and died the following morning, New Year’s Day 2010.
A widow with no children, she was suffering from mild dementia and colon cancer and entered the nursing home, CareChoice Montenotte, for a two-week respite. Relatives had become concerned as she told them she would go out walking at night and get lost trying to find her way home.
She took a room on the second floor with a large window almost 5ft in height offering views over Cork city. Initially quiet upon entering the care home, Ms Looney joined fellow residents for New Year’s Eve drinks, before taking a nap in the day room.
She later became agitated and asked to be taken upstairs to her room at 6.45pm.
Staff nurse Florence Donovan told Cork City Coroners Court Ms Looney spent much of the night wandering in the corridors of the old Victorian building and asking to go home. At 7am on New Year’s Day, Ms Donovan checked on Ms Looney one final time and she was in bed with her coat and shoes on.
“We had a chat, she said ‘promise you will come back?’ and I told her I would and that I would bring breakfast,” Ms Donovan said. Ms Looney was found impaled on 5ft 5in railings, directly below her window, by a day staff member arriving for work less than half an hour later.
She had climbed through a narrow gap of just eight inches – as the inward opening window was fitted with a safety device – and fell to her death below.
Nurse Aoife O’Donovan, who made the grim discovery, said she was traumatised by it. “In my career, I deal a lot with death, but finding Maura was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said.
Ms Looney sustained horrific injuries as a result of the fall and was pronounced dead at the scene.
In her autopsy, Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster attributed her death to haemorrhage and shock due to a penetrating wound and lacerations to the liver and lungs consistent with being impaled on railings.