A 75 year-old farmer crashed through a wall and plummeted twenty feet into a river to his death after going to cut turf.
Eugene Ward, from Glenties, died as a result of multiple injuries he sustained in the tragic fall.
The eldelry farmer had spent the morning working the fields at his farm on April 23, 2010.
He decided to drive the short distance to the bog to see if his turf cutting machine had arrived.
Shortly after 1pm, a neighbour, John Quinn, arrived to alert Mr Ward’s son Seamus that his father was in difficulties.
He rushed to the scene to find his father sitting outside the link box of his Massey Ferguson T20 tractor.
His sister Maureen, a nurse had called an ambulance and the fire brigade.
Eugene’s other son, John was in Glenties when he recieved a phone call in relation to the incident.
He recalled making his way to the scene where he found his father with a gash in his leg and complaining of pains in his chest.
His sister Maureen was trying to stop the bleeding.
He recalled his father talking and coherent. His father had
been rescued from the river at that point and was later brought to Letterkenny General Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 6.30pm.
Garda Dylan Conroy was called to the scene. He recalled that the tractor had apparently crashed through a wall and had dropped from a height.
The tractor was then taken for examination to Ballybofey where Sergeant John McDaid examined it.
Sergeant McDaid said that the cab of the tractor had been broken. The nuts which were attached to the double wheel were detached and damaged.
He said that the tractor, which was over thirty years old, had been in good condition before the accident.
He added that a post beside the bridge could have made contact with a back wheel.
Pathologist Katriona Dylan told the court that she had not carried out the postmortem but read the details on behalf of doctor Abdullah.
The notes outlined a number of medical conditions that had affected Mr Ward before his death, one of which was Anaemia (iron deficiency).
She said that if he hadn’t had the other medical conditions a younger man may have survived.
The jury of five men and one woman returned a verdict of the cause of death being multiple injuries sustained as a consequence of falling from a bridge in a tractor.