Young man fell from apartment block just seconds after talking to gardaí, inquest hears

Seán McCárthaigh

A young man suffered fatal injuries in a fall from an apartment block in Dublin less than a week after he had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital and just seconds after talking to gardai, an inquest has heard.

A sitting of Dublin District Coroner’s Court heard relatives of Hassan Mohammad Osman (21) express concern about the circumstances of the death of the 21-year-old Somalian native including that they had not been informed that he had indicated he was suicidal when he was involuntarily itted to St Vincent’s Hospital in Fairview a month earlier.

A postmortem showed Mr Osman died from a blunt force head injury consistent with a fall from a height.

The incident occurred shortly after midnight on September 26th, 2021 at Hampton Wood Point, Finglas. Mr Osman never regained consciousness and died three days later at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital.

Gardaí had been alerted to the scene by a local resident who had recorded a male standing on a windowsill of a fourth floor apartment around 12.20am.

Garda Diarmuid Murphy said Mr Osman had come down to the entrance of the apartment block by the time he and a colleague had arrived at the scene.

Garda Murphy said the young man appeared slightly confused and incoherent but calm in response to some questions.

On the way to the deceased’s apartment, Mr Osman said he needed to finish “the game of life” before adding: “I am God. I must die” which Garda Murphy said he found “alarming.”

Garda Murphy said he followed Mr Osman into his bedroom to check the safety locks of the window after the young man declared he was fine and going to bed.

The inquest heard two gardaí, Mr Osman’s mother and one of his brothers were with him when he got up and left the room.

Garda Murphy said he then heard another of the deceased’s brothers, who was in the kitchen, shouting about Mr Osman’s fall from the balcony.

In reply to questions from the coroner, Cróna Gallagher, he said he had planned to detain the deceased under the Mental Health Act but was checking with his family as they were unaware about him being on the windowsill.

He accepted that he had been wrong “to assume the worst was over”.

“As far as we were concerned, he was safe,” said Garda Murphy.

He told the coroner that gardaí were trained to remain calm in dealing with such cases and to try and de-escalate a situation, but he did not believe the training was “sufficient enough.”

However, Garda Murphy said gardaí “don’t operate with perfect knowledge and make the best judgement.”

A consultant psychiatrist, Prosper Obioha, gave evidence that Mr Osman had been itted to St Vincent’s Hospital for a relapse of paranoid schizophrenia that he had first been diagnosed with in 2018.

The inquest heard Ms Osman had mental health issues since he was 15 and also had been treated for substance abuse.

Dr Obioha said the deceased had indicated he was suicidal on ission to the hospital on August 24, 2021 but that he subsequently denied having such thoughts during the remainder of his stay.

He accepted Mr Osman’s family had not been informed about that, but he explained there were patient confidentiality issues as well as that it appeared not to be “an ongoing issue.”

The psychiatrist outlined how Mr Osman was discharged on September 20, 2021 after improvements in his health and on condition that he took his medication and stopped using cannabis.

Dr Obioha stressed that the patient was not psychotic at the time of discharge, while the medication he was prescribed would not have made his situation worse.

The deceased’s sister, Nima Osman, told the hearing that it was difficult to speak about her brother, whom she described as one of the bravest, strongest people she knew, in the past tense.

However, Ms Osman remarked: “His mental health battles became too heavy to carry alone.”

Ms Osman called for greater awareness about mental health issues because of the “heartbreakingly high” rate of suicide among young men in Ireland.

She urged people to be “more cautious, more human and more aware” with people like her brother.

The inquest heard Hassan, Nima and their mother, Nurrto Abdikadir Ahmed, moved to Ireland from Somalia in 2005.

Ms Ahmed told the hearing Hassan was her favourite child and that he had a leg amputated following a shooting incident when he was aged 4.

She recalled the family had eaten dinner that evening at 8pm before Hassan had gone back to his bedroom.

An officer with Fiosrú – the Office of the Police Ombudsman, Liam Hickey, said an investigation had found no breaches of any regulations by gardaí in the eight minutes they had with the deceased.

Mr Hickey said there were no specific guidelines governing the situation, and it was up to individual gardaí to assess how to deal with what they found.

Returning a verdict of self-inflicted death, Dr Gallagher said she could not make a finding of death by suicide as it was unclear that Ms Osman was capable of forming the intent to take his own life given his medical history.

The coroner offered her condolences to the deceased’s relatives on what she described as “an extremely sad and tragic case.”

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can freephone the Samaritans 24 hours a day for confidential at 116-123 or email [email protected]. Alternatively, information for a range of mental health s is available at www.mentalhealthireland.ie. In the case of an emergency, or if you or someone you know is at risk of suicide or self-harm, dial 999/112.