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Dublin Live
Dublin Live
National
Dan Grennan

RTE star Des Cahill receives donation from stranger after crying on TV

A stranger treated RTE star Des Cahill to a random act of kindness after he broke down in tears on Claire Byrne Live.

The presenter was on the show to help raise funds for a GAA hero recovering from a traumatic brain injury who once played in Des' local club.

Sean Drummond, 27, was involved in an accident in 2019 which left him with a traumatic brain injury after he was knocked down after finishing his master’s degree in London.

Read more: RTE star Des Cahill breaks down in tears on Claire Byrne Live

Speaking about Sean, Des broke down in tears as he recalled the bright and vibrant young man.

An appeal was made for donations to a GoFundMe page to help Sean recover.

Fighting back tears the RTE presenter said the group has raised over €400,000 and now hope to reach their target of €600,000 to help Sean.

The day after the show aired, a woman not known to Des saw him having his lunch in town and decided to make her own donation in person.

The sports presenter captioned a picture of a €20 euro note: "Having a sandwich in town and a woman who was watching ⁦‪Claire Byrne Live‬⁩ last night just walked by and left this on the table for #Support4Drummo - a lot of good people out there!"

His mother Jenny told Claire on the show: “He did an engineering degree. He finished that, he worked for a little while with a research group in UCD and then he got into a masters in Imperial in London and headed off in the end of August 2018 to start that masters and he had finished kind of the academic year in March.

“He finished his exams. He was going out celebrating that weekend with a group of people and he was coming home on the Tuesday and he was going to be playing for Cuala and he was involved in an accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury.”

Within his first 72 hours in hospital, Sean was on life support in the Acute Care Unit and had to undergo two emergency operations to remove large sections of his skull to reduce the pressure due to swelling on his brain.

For the next 2 months, Sean lay in bed in a coma, until in May, he finally underwent surgery to insert artificial plates into his skull.

After two and a half years in hospital in London Sean was finally able to return home however his recovery continues.

If you would like to donate to Support4Drummo and support Sean’s recovery, click here.

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