A mother whose son died from heroin addiction has told how she is still paying off her son’s massive debts — 10 years after he died.
Annette Kinehane, from Tallaght in Dublin, was left devastated after her 32-year-old son John was found dead with a needle in his arm in the toilet of a pub in January in 2013. He had just become a dad eight months prior to his death.
Annette will feature in tonight’s Gaelic in the Joy on RTE One, where she tells convicted offenders in Mountjoy prison how she was threatened with a hammer and a gun by debt collectors to pay her son’s drug debts in a bid to raise awareness about the impact of their crimes on innocent families. Speaking to co-host Philly McMahon, she said: “When he was 17 or 18, he started messing with hash. Then it progressed to tablets. He never had any money for anything.”
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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,” Annette said. “I believed everything he told me.”
Annette recalled the day she was first threatened by a gangster at her front door over a €5,000 debt her son owed. “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.”
She then tells viewers about another instance where she was threatened with a gun over another €15,000 loan. “I had a guy showed 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 tonight’s second episode of Gaelic in the Joy, Philly and Rory O’Connor feel the Mountjoy prisoners are not taking responsibility for the actions which led them to being incarcerated in prison in the first place. Philly decides to bring Annette into Mountjoy to meet the team and to give them some uncomfortable home truths.
Annette tells 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.”
Meanwhile, with discipline continuing to be a problem, Rory brings an old friend in to drill some discipline into them — Ultimate Hell Week chief instructor Ray Goggins. Philly and Rory have organised a challenge game against a team of ex-prisoners and staff from the Solas care after-prison group.
Gaelic in the Joy airs tonight 9.35pm.
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