Copyright evoke
Just hours after Dermot Maguire found his 14-year-old son Dan collapsed on his bedroom floor, both he and his wife Yvonne agreed they wanted people to know exactly how he had died - there would be no hiding from the truth. 'Straight away we said we weren't going to keep it to ourselves,' Dermot explains. 'The next day his school rang us to say they were having an assembly for the kids, and they asked if we wanted them to just say it was a sudden death. We said no, tell them everything.' 'We were united from the start,' adds Yvonne. 'That we need to save another family from going through this, there's not enough awareness that this is a thing.' It's exactly four weeks since Dan Maguire, a sporty, music-mad youngster with gorgeous hazel brown eyes, inhaled the contents of an aerosol can of deodorant. Despite the best efforts of his dad and older brother Adam, who performed CPR, and the swift arrival of paramedics, Dan couldn't be saved. He was pronounced dead at Temple Street Children's Hospital in the early hours of Saturday, September 27. This week Dermot posted a video to his Facebook page, warning parents and young people about the dangers of abusing aerosols. Holding a silver framed photo of Dan, he told how he'd thought long and hard about filming himself talking about his son's death, that it was an extremely difficult thing to do. Put up on Tuesday morning and so far viewed almost eight million times, Dermot bravely shared how Dan had died 'from inhaling deodorant, a simple mistake'. 'Teenagers, please talk to each other,' he pleaded. 'Parents, please talk to your kids. We have to stop this because what's left behind is just devastation, hurt... it has to stop. 'No family should have to go through what we went through.' He added: 'As I said at Daniel's funeral, it was one can of deodorant and 1,000 lives changed.' The Maguire family's decision to go public with the details of Dan's death comes just a week after the inquest into the death of another 14-year-old, Sarah Mescall, at her home near the village of Kilnamona in Co Clare. The similarities between these two heartbreaking cases are extraordinary. Sarah was at home with her family on September 25, 2023, when her mother Deirdre went to check on her in her bedroom just before 6pm. She found her daughter swaying, like she was drunk. After some panicked probing by her mother, Sarah told her that she'd inhaled the contents of an aerosol deodorant. She then collapsed and her father Joe rang for an ambulance. Sarah's parents and two neighbours, who happened to be nurses, all performed CPR on the youngster while waiting for the emergency services to arrive. She was first transferred by helicopter to University Hospital Limerick and then taken by ambulance to Temple Street in Dublin, before finally being moved to the Children's Hospital in Crumlin for specialist cardiac care. This fit and healthy teenager, who adored camogie and going for rides on her pony Gypsy, died five days after suffering serious brain damage. A hugely popular second year pupil at the Coláiste Muire in Ennis, she was the eldest of three children, and during his eulogy at her funeral, her uncle Oliver told how she was a 'was a cheeky devil in the nicest possible way'. In the immediate aftermath of her shocking and unexpected death, gardaí investigated whether she'd inhaled the aerosol as part of a viral TikTok challenge. However, at last week's inquest, no mention was made of the social media platform. A post-mortem confirmed that Sarah died from a lack of oxygen to the brain and damage to her heart muscle from a cardiac arrest due to the inhalation of a deodorant. A verdict of death by misadventure was recorded by coroner Dr Cróna Gallagher, who explained it was to reflect that Sarah died as the result of an unintended consequence of an action that had a risk factor. In her ruling, the coroner said that Sarah may not have known that what she was doing was risky, as teenagers have a different perception of risk to adults. And that it was unknown if it was the first time that Sarah had inhaled such a substance, but there was no evidence it was 'an ongoing, regular issue'. 'We obviously don't know what made her do it,' said Dr Gallagher. 'Other than I suppose all young people experiment.' It's a sentiment echoed by Prof Bobby Smyth, a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry, who works for the HSE in its adolescent addiction services. 'Kids are curious about intoxication,' he tells the Irish Daily Mail. 'This idea of their mind and brain, in terms of what you can do with it with substances. 'Also, they're growing up in Ireland surrounded by adults who drink and get intoxicated. 'They get curious, some more so than others, and the most common thing they'll do is raid mum and dad's drink cabinet. Other kids will hear of other methods to get intoxicated, and one of the more accessible ones is aerosols.' Although not everyone has the same experience, inhaling aerosols can induce a temporary drunk and woozy-type feeling. 'I think they wax and wane in terms of how used they are among teenagers,' says the professor. 'But they've always been there, I remember them back in the 1980s. These days we get a small number of referrals each year related to them, probably 2 per cent or 3 per cent.' Aerosol users who present to the HSE's addiction services tend to be younger kids, he says, some as little as primary school age. 'Some get really into it, it might be something they do multiple times a day or week,' he explains. 'It's often done on their own and no matter what the substance being used, when that happens it's concerning, because it's less about fun seeking and more about coping. Some kids don't like the way they feel when they're sober, and they discover those feelings go away when they take something.' Although around for a very long time, online the practice of inhaling chemical-based products has become known as 'huffing' or 'chroming', and as well as aerosols, it can include permanent markers, nail polish, paint, paint thinners and hairspray. Apart from a short-lived high, inhaling can cause clumsiness, irritation to the eyes, nose or throat, and headaches. Long-term effects include damage to the liver, kidney, muscles and brain, memory loss, concentration issues, irritability, loss of smell and taste, and increased risk of depression and anxiety. There is also a risk of death. 'When solvents or aerosols are inhaled in this way it can irritate the vagus nerve in your throat,' explains Prof Smyth. 'The vagus nerve travels down to your heart, and it can cause an irregular heartbeat which can cause a cardiac arrest.' When contacted this week, the National Drugs Library, which collates figures for the Health Research Board on the number of deaths in Ireland each year due to the misuse of drugs, said: 'We can confirm the number is very small. Volatile inhalants were implicated in six poisoning deaths over the three-year period 2019 to 2021. The substances were mainly propane/butane.' Prof Smyth, however, says his team have noticed 'a broad increase in inhaled substance use'. 'Cannabis, vapes, nitrous oxide aka "fast gas", and aerosols fit into it as well,' he says. 'I think we've normalised inhaled substance use, but I can't point to any real data that aerosols have nudged up.' He hugely admires the Maguires' decision to speak out publicly this week. 'It's not just brave, it's actually very useful when families do share their experience,' he says. 'Others can learn from it, there's nothing more impactful. I could go on about statistics and data, but where there's a real person who's suffered real problems, that's what makes a difference.' At their home this week in Huntstown, north Dublin, Yvonne and Dermot Maguire are still clearly in shock. 'It's still so fresh,' says Yvonne. 'At the moment it still doesn't even seem possible that he's gone.' On shelves and on walls there are a dozen or so photographs of their three sons - Adam, 24, Daniel and 13-year-old Andrew. But your eye is constantly drawn to a beautiful headshot of Dan, in a large frame that sits in the middle on the mantelpiece. It's the one his dad clutches in his Facebook video. Yvonne, who works for Dublin City Council, tells how reading about Sarah Mescall's inquest last week was 'like taking a bullet', coming so soon after Dan's death. 'The circumstances were very similar, she was in her house,' she says. 'God love those poor parents. She hung on for five days - I just can't imagine.' While they are happy with their decision to go public about how Dan died, Yvonne mentions a couple of times about how she believes they might be judged. 'We're not a rough family, some people will think he was dragged up,' she says. 'But that's not the case. We're strict parents and a really normal family, the same as that poor Sarah's family.' 'It's not a class thing,' says Dermot, a bus driver. 'It's across every walk of life, and no matter what school you're in, from the poshest to the lowest, they're all at it and if this can happen to our kid, it can happen to yours too. It was just a mistake he made.' The Maguires say they're shocked at how many of Dan's friends and peers have contacted them since he died, to tell them that inhaling aerosols is a common pastime for many teenagers. While they both remember it 'being a thing' when they were younger, they had no idea it was popular today, even among kids who look after their health. 'That day, Dan was at the gym, he's a fitness freak,' explains Yvonne. 'He came home, and Dermot was doing chicken on the barbecue with corn on the cob, and afterwards Dan went to football from 7pm to 8pm.' Yvonne went to bed around 10.30pm and less than half an hour later Dermot was ready to lock the house up. Dan had the key for the front door upstairs with him in his bedroom. 'Dermot shouted up to him, to throw it down,' says Yvonne. 'And he said, "no problem". But 30 seconds later there was no sign of him, so Dermot shouted up again and this time there was no response, so he went up to him. Dan was lying on the ground.' Dermot began to shout for help, and Dan's little brother Andrew ran into the room. He was dispatched to get Adam from downstairs. Yvonne woke up to the commotion and went to see what was wrong. 'Adam said to me after, "I will never forget the scream out of you",' she recalls. They say the paramedics who arrived were 'absolute heroes', who swiftly transported him to the resuscitation room in Temple Street where medics continued to work on him until after 1am. 'I knew myself he was gone before he even left the house,' Dermot says quietly. Like the Mescals before them, it's an unfathomable tragedy, that their soccer-crazy middle son is now gone forever. After going through his phone, they don't think it was a TikTok challenge - it's just something kids are trying, they believe, after sharing information between themselves, not realising the deadly risks involved. An autopsy was done, but they won't learn the results for some time. They've been informed there's a probability of an inquest. The entire time talking to them both, you are acutely aware of how recent all of this is for the Maguire family. They say Dan's two brothers are coping as best they can, some days are better than others. 'They're obviously going to deal with it differently to how we deal with it,' says Dermot. 'They lost a brother, we lost a child. But we'll get there, we've engaged with Temple Street grief services, so that's the next step.' 'Some days are really bad,' says Yvonne. 'Some days are bearable, no day is OK.' The support from friends, family and the community has been incredible. 'The Saturday he died, by 6pm that evening kids were up and down the road tying blue balloons on every tree, ribbons everywhere,' says Dermot. 'About 300 kids were on the green releasing balloons and for the funeral they all got these hoodies [with a photo of Dan] made up. 'It really helped, in fact, the kids kept us going. They were incredible, calling into the house, they just wanted to come in and sit with us. It's not just about us, they've now experienced their friend dying. 'You see, this was a very typical thing for a teenager to do, to experiment, but Dan lost his life from it. 'That's why we need to speak out, to give purpose to his death. Kids think they're invincible, that nothing can harm them. But that's not true.
