CLUTCHING A photograph of her son, Andrew Hanlon, and choking back the tears, Dorothea Carroll told the waiting media gathered outside Dublin County Coroner’s Court that she often thinks about her son lying in a pool of blood dying and wishes she could have been with him.
“There’s no closure for us whatsoever,” she said reflecting on the jury’s finding of “open verdict” at an inquest into the shooting dead of Mr Hanlon by a US police officer in Silverton, Oregon.
“I understand there could only be an open verdict, but I just want somebody, anybody to say to me that the shooting of my son was wrong,” she said.
“From here we have nowhere to go – that’s the bottom line,” said Mrs Carroll, who was accompanied by Mr Hanlon’s stepfather, Justin Carroll.
“My son. . . was 20 years old. He was unarmed.
“ Tony Gonzalez took it upon himself to put five bullets into my son.
“And my son died alone on a dark street with no one who cared around him.”
Mr Carroll criticised the portrayal of Mr Hanlon as having mental health problems in the American media and in some of the Irish media following his death, describing it as “disgraceful”.