LAST UPDATE | 2 May 2025

THE MOTHER OF a man who died in a drowning incident in the River Lee in Cork city on Wednesday said the scene was “like a circus” with people filming the tragedy.

Elizabeth Hyde was speaking to RedFM’s Neil Prendeville Show after her son Luke Hyde, aged 33, died in the water in Pope’s Quay in Cork City.

Elizbeth said Luke was her second son to die in recent years.

“Imagine standing around instead of trying to help him (Luke), what has this world come to?

“I don’t even think there’s a word that could describe them.

“It’s completely unnatural what took place down there, I don’t know how I’ll ever, ever forget it.”

She said Luke had “beautiful manners” and “everyone loved him because he was such a polite young man”.

“He was the gentlest person going and always worried about other people having problems, that’s the type of person he was and he would try to help everybody.”

Luke had recently started a new job and Elizabeth said he had told her that he was getting his life together.

Elizabeth said she was watching TV on the evening Luke died when she heard a helicopter nearby.

“I said to myself, ‘God help us’, whoever they are looking for, I hope they find them.

“Little did I know that was my son they were looking for.”

She said her family are “cut to pieces” that people were filming rather than helping.

Gardaí and emergency services have asked people not to share and to delete any footage that was filmed.

Victor Shine, second officer with Cork Fire Brigade, told RTÉ’s Drivetime: “This is not a piece of footage that should be up on a public system.

“That family may come across it or it may be shared with them, it’s not a good thing.”

Asked if social media had made problems such as this worse, he said it was “horrendously worse”.

“I listened to the mother of this poor deceased male this morning who was distressed by the whole event and ran down in her bare feet and witnessed this spectacle of the amount of people standing by watching her son being recovered from the water, it was a horrendous scene.”

He said moving the crowd of people who were standing by took up time and resources and should not be needed.

“Gardai had to push people (back), force them to clear the area, and we had to put up additional privacy screens, screens to block off the area so that when the casualty was recovered to the shoreline or to the roadway, rescue attempts to check for signs of life and so on could carry on.”

Speaking today, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said reports that people filmed the tragedy “is a very sad and regrettable feature of modern life”.

“I read what the fire officers said; they found it very difficult to comprehend that there were no life buoys thrown in to help but people were taking photographs or videoing.

“For family members, that’s very sad and very traumatic.

“I’m very well aware of other incidents where people are very brave, where people do the right thing, and that needs to be said.

“But not withstanding the modern era we live in, decorum and dignity are essential values that we should retain, particularly when people are in distressful circumstances, and in that situation where a person has actually drowned.”

In a statement to The Journal, a spokesperson from the Irish Coast Guard said that on Wednesday it was alerted to an incident involving two people in the water in Pope’s Quay in Cork City.

One person was successfully recovered from the water, and after a search, Luke’s body was recovered.

The Coast Guard offered its condolences to Luke’s family and thanked all of those involved in the search.