A STUDENT died from injuries after slipping on a campus building site and impaling herself on a steel bar, Dublin Coroner's Court heard yesterday. Anastasia (Anna) Walsh of Ballybrazil, New Ross, Co Wexford, was returning with her student boyfriend from a campus bank pass machine at about 3 a.m. when the accident happened.
Her flatmate, Ms Lynn Bolger, said she and Anna arrived at the student bar around 9 p.m. After a drink they agreed to buy and share an ecstasy tablet.
The girls met two students, Mr Barry Fitzpatrick and Mr John Carroll, and went to a disco in the student club. Later Anna and Barry Fitzpatrick went to a pass machine.
Mr Fitzpatrick, a student at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design, said they went through the building site between the bank and the students' club. He jumped over a 2 ft foundation ditch over a concrete platform and saw Anna falling backwards. When he went to help her he didn't realise that she had cut herself on the steel bars.
He tried to lift her up but she appeared to be in shock. With the help of three security guards they managed to lift her up. Anna was taken to St Vincent's Hospital where despite surgery her condition deteriorated quickly and she went into cardiac arrest. She died at 7 a.m.
Ms Aisling Kennedy, duty manager UCD, said "a sweep of the campus started at 2.45 a.m. Security men were in the immediate vicinity of the club and a Group Four patrol were on the campus peripheral area.
She said that at 3.10 am. a woman was found lying beside a concrete pad in the middle of the Sisk building site near the old bar. A man was trying to revive her. She said security men noticed that the top 8 ft 9 ins of a piece of reinforced steel bar protruded from the pad where the deceased was found. There appeared to be a puncture wound high on her upper right thigh in the groin area and bleeding was severe.
A pathologist, Dr S. Rajendiran, said that during a post mortem examination she found a 36 centimetre curved scar on the deceased's front abdominal wall penetrating the groin. A major blood vessel had been penetrated by the steel bar. Toxicology samples indicated traces of ecstasy and marijuana in her blood. The cause of death was extensive bleeding due to groin injury. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.