A golf ball placed in the back of a dead man’s throat is believed to have been a prank and not had anything to do with his death.
Dublin City coroner Dr Brian Farrell expressed his outrage at the act as an “unconscionable and malicious intrusion into a death investigation”.
Gardaí continue to investigate the incident, more than a year after gardener Kevin O’Doherty died.
Mr O’Doherty (48), of Whitethorn Lodge, Castleside, Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, died suddenly on the afternoon of January 27, 2010.
A postmortem conducted two days later found Mr O’Doherty had died died of abnormal heart rhythm due to heart disease, reports the Irish Times.
The golf ball was discovered in the corpse during an embalming process at Fanagan’s Funeral Directors on Aungier Street, Dublin.
“I couldn’t see it. I tried to dislodge it, which I did. I found it was a golf ball,” Joe Cronin, who was embalming the body, said.
Gardaí have dismissed any suggestion that the golf ball had an thing to do with Mr O’Doherty’s death.
“We’re satisfied the golf ball had nothing to do with the death. We interviewed all the staff at St James’s Hospital and at Fanagan’s and we’re at a loss as to how this came about. We can only surmise it was a prank,” he said.
