Sinead O’Connor tragically died 18 months after her son, Shane, whose body was sadly found in a secluded area at the back of a housing estate in Ireland on January 7, 2022
An inquest into the death of Sinead O’Connor’s son has revealed some heartbreaking information following the sudden loss of the Nothing Compares 2 U star last year.
Sinead, 56, died just 18 months after her son, Shane, 17, whose body was found in a secluded area at the back of a housing estate in Ireland on January 7, 2022. The Irish singer, who formally identified her son’s body to gardaí, died suddenly from natural causes in London.
Sinead and her son had a ‘complex and turbulent’ relationship but were also very close and ‘in some way dependent on each other throughout their lives’, an inquest into Shane’s death has heard in heartbreaking detail.
At the time of Shane’s death, he was due to be under supervised 24/7 one-to-one care. Dublin District Coroner’s Court yesterday heard the teenager had been brought to the emergency department by his mother on December 29, 2021 after a drug overdose, in what was believed to be an attempted suicide.
Speaking about his daughter’s relationship with her son, Sean O’Connor, described how Sinead and Shane were “very close”. “They loved each other madly,” he said, according to MailOnline.
Mr O’Connor revealed how the singer was also suffering mental health issues around the same time of her son’s death. “She was not in a position to do more than she did, which was a lot,” he added.
The inquest heard staff were not available to provide the 24/7 supervision for Shane prescribed by the hospital’s doctors. A senior social worker with Tusla, Joyce Connolly, told the second day of the inquest yesterday that Shane and his mother had a ‘complex and turbulent’ relationship but were also very close and ‘in some way dependent on each other throughout their lives.’
Ms Connolly said the singer hoped to resume full-time care of her son and there were ongoing discussions to see if that might be possible.
The inquest heard Shane had been under the care of Tusla, the child and family agency, since 2015 and had been fostered by his half-brother, Jake Reynolds – the late singer’s eldest child – and his partner, Lia Petcu, between July 2016 and May 2018 before being placed in residential care facilities.
Aoife Scanlon, a manager of the New Beginnings residential care centre in Newbridge, Co Kildare, where Shane had lived since March 2019, said he had settled in well to the facility for the first year. Fighting Ms Scanlon fought back tears as she recalled Shane as ‘a lovely, lovely lad.’
She observed that he had found approaching his 18th birthday ‘a very daunting experience’ as he would no longer have access to specialist health and welfare services for young people.
“He struggled with being in care for a good while but he knew he needed a level of support,” she added. Ms Scanlon also remarked: “He was so intelligent, so smart. He knew he could make it in life and would have spoken to that.”
Closing the inquest, Dr Gallagher said the hearing had involved ‘very complex evidence’ which was also ‘very arduous and harrowing’ but expressed hope it had been of some value to his family.
The coroner acknowledged that Shane had suffered in his short life but that he had hoped as he matured that he could ‘move through this time of crisis.’
She said she could only imagine the shock of his death to his family, noting that he would have celebrated his 21st birthday next March.
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