The last known movements of a teenage girl who went back into the Stardust fire to look for her sister were recounted at inquests into the deaths of 48 people in the blaze, on Tuesday.
Brian Killeen, 18 at the time of the disaster, told Dublin coroner’s court he and six friends, including Teresa McDonnell (16) from Coolock, were “together” as they made their way into the foyer to escape. She wanted to go back and alert her sister Lorraine to leave, he said.
“She left to go back and tell her sister, that’s all I recall ... We were all together, seven of us were together,” said Mr Killeen. He did not see Teresa again. Once he got outside, he said, “We were looking [for her] straight away ... Then we went around all the hospitals looking, Jervis Street ... all the different hospitals, the Mater.”
Earlier this year, in her pen-portrait of her sister, Lorraine Sorohan told the inquests she had “struggled with the great loss of my sister Teresa all my life”.
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Fresh inquests into the deaths of 48 people, aged 16 to 27, in the fire in the Artane ballroom in the early hours of February 14th, 1981 are under way following a 2019 direction by then attorney general Séamus Woulfe.
On Tuesday six witnesses who had attended that night as patrons, then aged between 17 and 19, gave evidence. All said they had not been asked for identification on the night, nor knew any of the bouncers, and all got in without a problem despite the Stardust being an over-21s venue.
John Molloy, 18 at the time, was there with three friends. Among those he “chatted” to about half an hour before he decided to leave at about 1.30am was Richard Bennett (17) from Coolock who died.
“I was at school with him, the same school in Kilmore. We were just having a chat for a couple of minutes about back to school and that, how he was getting on,” Mr Molloy said on Tuesday. Mr Bennett was one of five whose remains lay unidentified for 25 years due to the severity of his burns.
Sharon O’Hanlon, 17 at the time, told the inquests about “sections” of the ceiling falling on to the table at which she and friends were sitting, of assuming this had been caused by “heat” from the fire and thinking it “strange” as the fire was several rows of seats away from them at the time.
She is thought to be among the first who became aware of the fire as she and friends smelt smoke shortly after 1.30am. Her group was sitting at a table right beside the partition between the area where the fire was first seen, and the ballroom.
She got down on her hunkers, looked under the partition and saw the fire confined to a corner at the back.
“There was not a lot of smoke. It was just at the back seats,” she said. It had not yet ignited the carpet-clad walls. A friend, Valerie Walsh, pushed her back from the table as “pieces” of the ceiling fell over it, she said. “We grabbed our coats and bags” and left.
People did not seem “alert” to the fact there was a fire at this stage. They looked back as they got to the foyer saw the fire was spreading “very fast”.
Sean Guerin, for the families of nine of the dead, asked her about pieces of the ceiling falling and her impression that the “heat of the fire” had caused this.
“This was happening without any sign of the fire making contact with the ceiling from underneath it?”
“Yes. It was very surprising that this had happened,” she said. “Is it possible the fire was accessing the ceiling from the other side?” he asked. “Yes,” she replied.
Frances Winston, 17 at the time, recounted feeling “threatened” by one of the Stardust doormen in April 1981 as she was about to give evidence at the tribunal of investigation into the disaster chaired by Mr Justice Ronan Keane.
She told gardaí at the time the doorman had said to her: “Youse are only telling one side of the story. Wait ‘till next week and we get up there and tell all about the underage drinking and people smoking hash, and all the people who should not be there.”
Asked by Bernard Condon, for the families of ten of the dead, how this had made her feel, she said: “I felt he was threatening us at the time. We were only kids at the time. We were schoolkids. I didn’t drink. None of our table drank. We were drinking orange. So, for him to say, ‘underage drinking’.”
At the close of Tuesday’s hearing coroner Dr Myra Cullinan extended her sympathies to the family of George O’Connor (17) from Coolock who died in the fire, on the death of their mother Mary. In September, Julia Muldoon, mother of Kathleen Muldoon (19) from Kells, Co Meath who also perished in the blaze, died.
