A mother whose son died with a needle in his arm is still paying off his drugs debt ten years after his death.
John Kinehane, from Tallaght in Dublin, was found dead in the toilet of a pub in January in 2013, eight months after he became a father.
Before his death his mother Annette was threatened by thugs armed with a hammer and later by collectors wielding a gun and demanding she pay her son’s drug debts.
She will tell a television show tonight a decade on from John’s death and she is still paying off the money he owed to dealers.
Dublin Live reported she told documentary host Philly McMahon in Gaelic in the Joy: “When he was 17 or 18, he started messing with hash. Then it progressed to tablets. He never had any money for anything.”
She confided in her youngest daughter about what was going on before her daughter then told her that he was doing drugs. “I must’ve been the most gullible mother in Dublin.
“And then one day I got a knock on the door and this lovely chap with a hammer told me that he was here to collect a debt. I said that I didn’t owe any money. He said my son owed €5,000 and I had three days or he would be dead.
“I had a guy show me his gun and said your son owes us €15,000. It spiralled out of control. I was working 12-hour shifts in a hospital to pay these people.
“I remember I got him in the corner one day – and he was six foot – and I beat the head off him. I’m not a violent person but I couldn’t take any more. Do you know what he says to me? ‘You’re killing me buzz’.
“Everything...we tried everything. But heroin was stronger.”
In the show Annette tells convicted offenders in Mountjoy prison how she was raising awareness of the impact of people’s crimes on innocent families
Annette tells the prisoners: “He was 32. He died with a needle in his arm in a pub on a filthy dirty toilet.
“He was there for five hours.”
