CCTV 'not working at drowning scene'

The inquest, held last Thursday, into the death of 43-year-old Joseph Grant outside Ballymena PSNI station also heard the only reason the Newry man was in the north Antrim town was due to an error in a police computer system.

The body of the father of three was discovered floating face down in the storm drain two days after he left the building in November 2008.

A former PSNI official who then had responsibility for the station estate told coroner Joanne Donnelly that the closest CCTV camera to the incident was not functioning due to a wiring problem.

But she said she could not be certain whether the lens would have spotted Mr Grant if it had been functioning.

“I honestly don’t know if the camera had been working what height it was recording at and whether he would have been visible,” she said.

Mr Grant had attended the station with a bail form he had received after appearing at Newry Magistrates Court that morning charged with shoplifting.

Ms Donnelly heard that a glitch in the PSNI’s IT system had resulted in him being wrongly sent to an address in Ballymena that had been mistakenly recorded as a bail hostel.

Mr Grant’s former partner Rosemary McGranaghan and his brother Charles Grant were among those who attended the hearing in Ballymena courthouse.

The Dublin-born unemployed labourer, who had just been released from prison, had never been to the town before the night he died and had told the bus driver on his trip from Belfast he feared he could get beaten up because of his southern accent.

On arrival the driver drew him a map to the address noted on his bail form.

Mr Grant set off in that direction but eventually ended up at the police station.

He stayed there for nearly three hours, with officers at one point offering to drive him to what he thought was his hostel.

But in the event they were unable to give him a lift and around 11pm told him he had no reason to stay at the station and showed him out.

A while later he was spotted by a security guard drinking fortified wine outside the station, and at this point two officers went out and moved him on.

Shortly afterwards John O’Rawe, who lived on the opposite side of the stream, saw a man walking in the water.

He said the man looked steady on his feet and he presumed he was either a police officer or a maintenance man.

“I thought by his actions he was a police officer looking for something or somebody from the water board,” said Mr O’Rawe.

Owen Norris, a neighbour of Mr O’Rawe, found the body two days later.

During the day-long hearing, a police IT expert revealed that a processing error had seen the address of a homeless hostel in Belfast replaced by a residential address in Ballymena.

“It’s likely this was an accidental user error when trying to correct an address,” said the officer from the PSNI’s Information and Communication Services Department.

But Ms Donnelly noted the grave implications of the mistake, which led to the wrong address being put on Mr Grant’s bail form.

“If that address hadn’t been on his form he wouldn’t have been in Ballymena that night,” she said. “So it’s very, very significant indeed.”

The coroner adjourned the inquest until later in the summer in order to obtain more material relating to the incident.