Advertisement

Bandon Rugby Club engaging with gardaí over teens in "alcoholic coma" at disco

Updated 19:05 Bandon Rugby club has said it is engaging closely with Gardaí and relevant a...
Newstalk
Newstalk

11.48 23 Feb 2018


Share this article


Bandon Rugby Club engaging wit...

Bandon Rugby Club engaging with gardaí over teens in "alcoholic coma" at disco

Newstalk
Newstalk

11.48 23 Feb 2018


Share this article


Updated 19:05

Bandon Rugby club has said it is engaging closely with Gardaí and relevant authorities after a number of teens were treated for intoxication at an underage disco on its grounds.

Three children were brought to hospital struggling to breathe on their own - while around a dozen were treated at a make-shift hospital outside the disco last Friday.

Advertisement

Some teens had neat vodka hidden in their socks.

Hospital

Dr Chris Luke was working at Cork University Hospital on the night.

He said the triage was set up to prevent overwhelming the emergency department.

"We were absolutely flat out - we already had lots of very, very sick people - we were more or less full with genuinely sick people.

"So one of our doctors - Dr Jason van der Velde - he runs the West Cork Community Rescue Service.

"He went to the scene and I gather he led a sort of major incident response involving the guards, the club staff, the club security (and) local nurses.

"Children were being lifted off the bus in a state of alcoholic coma - and not going into the disco hall, but they were being placed into dressing rooms.

"You can understand why ambulances were called and of course ambulances did arrive, but I think if Jason and the people of Bandon Rugby Club and the town hadn't got themselves organised and weren't ready for this sort of incident we would have been absolutely overwhelmed."

Garda investigation

Dr van der Velde said Gardaí were at the scene:

Bandon Rugby Club engaging with gardaí over teens in "alcoholic coma" at disco

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

“We had to obviously get the guards involved; the guards then had to call the parents and ultimately social work has to be involved,” he said.

“From a duty of care [perspective] we had to make sure that each intoxicated teenager was accounted for – parents informed, guards informed and the like.

“So we held on to as many as we could hold on to.”

Vomitorium

He said the scene was “like walking into an ancient Roman vomitorium.”

"There was literally teenagers strew across the club changing room (in) extreme states of intoxication vomiting into buckets," he said.

He said there were too teenagers that were “that intoxicated that their blood pressures were only in the region of 70 systolic.”

“Which really means that they had no means or way of being able to manage their own airway.

“If left alone, they would have probably died.”


Share this article


Read more about

News

Most Popular