A then-teenager who left the Stardust before the fire was noticed has told an inquest that the outside door of the club was locked when he went to leave and he had to wait for a keyholder to open the door.
Lorcan Doody, who was 18 at the time, told Mark Tottenham BL, a member of the coroner’s legal team, there was a bouncer at the door who said they would have to wait “until the man with the key came back”. He confirmed to Mr Tottenham that the bouncer at the door did not have a key.
Asked if he remembered roughly how long the delay was before the key arrived, Mr Doody said it was about three minutes.
He said he was panicking because he was told he had to have the car he was using back by 1.30am, so it was “hard to judge the time”, but confirmed they had to wait until a second man came back with a key.
In his deposition given to Gardaí at the time, which was read to the court on Tuesday, Mr Doody said at around 12am “something happened the record” and it sounded to him as if power was cut off to it, but none of the lights were affected.
He said the fault lasted for about 10 seconds and the DJ made a comment about Friday being the 13th and that it was “not his night”.
In his statement, Mr Doody said he and his friends left at 1am and, as they were leaving, the shutters on either side of the door were completely down and the middle shutter was down low.
He said the bouncer told them to mind their heads as they were leaving. He confirmed to Mr Tottenham that the bouncer had lifted the shutter but not all the way up, so he had to duck to get through.
His statement also referred to a man he noticed, aged between 18 and 23, looking in a window as the group of friends were leaving.
Asked if there was anything particularly suspicious or unusual about the young man, Mr Doody said after the group found out about the fire, they had questioned that, but gardaí reassured them that it was somebody who had been homeless that the kitchen staff used to feed at the weekends.
Cloud of smoke
Paul James Shortall, who was 20 at the time, also told Dublin District Coroner’s Court that he left the nightclub at around 1.40am. As he was getting into his car minutes later, he saw the doors of an emergency exit burst open and a handful of people exit the building, he said.
Mr Shortall told Brenda Campbell KC, representing a number of the families of the deceased, there had been “a huge cloud of black smoke” so it would have been impossible to say how many people came out but he estimated it probably “would be single figures”.
He said he did not know whether the people emerging were staff or patrons.
Ms Campbell read an extract from Mr Shortall’s statement, given to Gardaí at the time, in which he said he tried to shine the lights of his car on the exit door to see if it could provide any assistance, but it was not having much effect because the door was too high. The witness confirmed this was what had happened.
In Mr Shortall’s statement, he also told how, after moving his car out of the car park, he and his girlfriend went back to see if their friends had got out, and as they did so he could see flames coming from the roof and could see “the whole place was on fire”.
He said there were “people running everywhere, screaming” and he could see people coming out the main door but did not notice any of the other exits at this stage.
He said they were anxious to check on their friends, adding it was very difficult to find anyone or to know them because a lot of people were blackened with the smoke. They eventually found their friends after 15 or 20 minutes, he said, and they were all okay except for one who had burns on his face, back and shoulders and had already gone to hospital.
In his direct evidence on Tuesday, Mr Shortall said at around 1.30am, his girlfriend told him she was tired and wanted to leave, so they left the club about 10 minutes later, walking around the side of the building to where his car was parked.
He said it was at that stage that he first noticed smoke coming from the building as they walked towards the car.
In his statement, Mr Shortall said when he saw the smoke he thought it might have been from the kitchen and so did not pay much attention to it. He confirmed to Bernard Condon SC, also representing a number of bereaved families, that he had presumed it was coming from the kitchen, but added he did not know where the kitchen was located.
