A coroner has warned that there is no safe level for consuming cocaine following the death from the drug of a hospital chef, described as “hard working” and “football crazy” by his family.<\/p>\n
Keith McGivern, aged 49, of St Anthony’s Road, Rialto, Dublin 8 was found dead in the bedroom of his home on 14 October 2025.<\/p>\n
A sitting of Dublin District Coroner\u2019s Court heard concern about Mr McGivern\u2019s welfare was raised after he failed to show up at the Coombe Hospital where he had worked for almost 20 years.<\/p>\n
A sister of the deceased said she had been contacted by one of her brother\u2019s work colleagues when he uncharacteristically did not come to work for two days in a row.<\/p>\n
Ashling McGivern gave evidence of calling over to her brother\u2019s apartment around 8am and being let in by his landlord when she got no answer.<\/p>\n
Ms McGivern, who had last seen her brother four days earlier, said she was joined by his boss and another work colleague who had called to the apartment because of their concern about him.<\/p>\n
She told the inquest she was shocked to find her brother lying on his bed in a position that looked like he might have struggled.<\/p>\n
Garda Niamh Bailey gave evidence of attending the scene and finding a large amount of empty cans of alcohol and a small bag containing a white substance which was suspected to be cocaine.<\/p>\n
She said a doctor called to the apartment estimated that Mr McGivern had been deceased for approximately 12 hours.<\/p>\n
Garda Bailey confirmed that there was no sign of any disturbance or third party having been in the apartment.<\/p>\n
However, relatives of the deceased expressed puzzlement that his mobile phone had never been found as it “went everywhere with him”.<\/p>\n
The coroner, Cr\u00f3na Gallagher, agreed that it was “very unusual” but said it was unlikely that much further light could be shed on the issue.<\/p>\n
The inquest heard medical records showed Mr McGivern had no history of treatment for substance issues.<\/p>\n
Dr Gallagher said the results of a post-mortem examination showed the deceased had a high level of cocaine in his body as well as cocaethylene – a compound formed from a combination of cocaine and alcohol.<\/p>\n
The coroner said the mixing of the two substances would make the cocaine have a higher potency.<\/p>\n
Dr Gallagher said the deceased had an unusual 80% narrowing of one of his coronary arteries for a 49-year-old non-smoker, which she said presented a risk of a sudden heart attack that could be accelerated by using cocaine over a period of time.<\/p>\n
The coroner attributed the cause of death to cardiac arrhythmia or a cardiac arrest “precipitated by cocaine”.<\/p>\n
She added: “The cocaine levels were high enough. Unfortunately, cocaine at any level can cause a cardiac arrest. It\u2019s not safe at any level.”<\/p>\n
Dr Gallagher said Mr McGivern\u2019s death was due to the toxic effect of cocaine, but she observed that the narrowing of his coronary artery was also a contributory factor as it made him more prone to sudden death than someone with a normal heart.<\/p>\n
The coroner offered her sympathy to relatives of the deceased who were visibly upset by the evidence after admitting they were completely unaware that he had been using drugs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coroner has warned that there is no safe level for consuming cocaine following the death from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-584998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}