A 59-YEAR-OLD mother of two, found soiled in bed by ambulance personnel, appeared to be nothing but “skin and bone” when she was visited in hospital by her son’s partner before she died, a court was told yesterday.
Evelyn Joel was visited in Wexford General Hospital on January 2nd, 2006, by her son Liam’s partner, Laura Kavanagh. She visited with Evelyn Joel’s daughter, Eleanor, Wexford Circuit Criminal Court heard.
Ms Kavanagh told the jury of six men and six women how she had met Eleanor Joel on December 31st, 2005, when the latter called to her house.
When she asked her how her mother was, Eleanor said that she was fine.
Two days later she met Eleanor at Wexford General Hospital and they went to see her mother in the intensive-care unit where she had been admitted following her transfer to hospital by HSE ambulance personnel on January 1st, 2006
“It didn’t look like her – all I could see was her head – she was lying back in the bed, her eyes were sunken back in her head, she was just skin and bone and her teeth were sticking out,” said Ms Kavanagh.
Ms Joel’s daughter Eleanor (37) and her partner, Jonathan Costen (39), both deny two charges relating to the death of Ms Joel, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, who was living with them at their home at Cluain Dara in Enniscorthy.
Both Eleanor Joel and Mr Costen deny a charge of unlawful killing of her mother on January 7th, 2006, by neglect, causing her to die of pneumonia, complicating sepsis syndrome due to infected pressure sores due to immobilisation due to MS.
They also deny a charge of reckless endangerment of her mother on a date unknown between December 1st, 2005, and January 1st, 2006, contrary to section 13 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997.
Cross-examined by counsel for Eleanor Joel, Rosario Boyle SC, Ms Kavanagh said that Eleanor rang her on the day that her mother died asking her to go with her to the hospital to visit her mother but she was unable to go with her.
She said that Eleanor Joel rang her back later to say that her mother had died and she was quite upset.
Ms Kavanagh recalled that Eleanor Joel said to her: “What am I going to do, she’s dead and I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
She said Eleanor Joel then said to her that she felt she (Ms Kavanagh) and her brother, Liam Joel, were going to blame her for her mother’s death but Ms Kavanagh told her she wasn’t going to blame her.
Ms Kavanagh said that whenever she visited Eleanor Joel and Mr Costen at their home at Cluain Dara, the floor would be covered with “dirty dinner plates and beer cans” but the only time she got a smell was when rubbish bags were in the kitchen.
Liam Joel told the court he and Eleanor had “a happy but hardy” childhood as money was tight when they were growing up and his mother and father, Billy Joel, used to frequently row over his father’s drinking.
He agreed, when it was put to him in cross-examination, that his mother and father were first cousins once removed and he agreed that when his mother and father separated, his mother began a relationship with his father’s brother, Alfie.
Eleanor, who never went to secondary school, kept in touch with their mother when she moved to Dublin and Arklow but he never got on with his mother and did not visit her when she returned to Enniscorthy, although she would sometimes call to his house.
She had MS when she returned to Enniscorthy and his last contact with her was about three years prior to her death when she came to his house. Although he had gone to Eleanor’s house several times since when she was there, he never saw her.
He had asked Eleanor when she visited his house on December 31st, 2005, if his mother was still living with them (Eleanor and her partner) and Eleanor said she was fine but he discovered the next day that his mother had been taken, seriously ill, to hospital.
He only discovered the circumstances surrounding his mother’s death on radio and television the day after her funeral on January 11th, 2006, and he had not spoken to his sister since then, he told the court. The case continues tomorrow.