The parents of a Dublin teenager who died last month after inhaling fumes from an aerosol deodorant are urging others to speak to their children about the dangers involved.
Daniel Maguire, from Huntstown in Dublin, was 14 years old when he died after collapsing in his bedroom at the end of September.
Daniel's father, Dermot, told Prime Time that he was a typical teenager: "He loved his sport, his friends, his MMA. He was a really good kid, never in trouble, anything like that."
His mother Yvonne described him as funny and kind-hearted: "He wouldn’t leave the house without giving me a kiss and a hug and saying, 'love you, Mam.’"
On 26 September, Daniel had gone to the gym, eaten dinner with the family at home and played a football match.
After Daniel had gone to up to his room to bed, Dermot called upstairs, asking him to throw down a key to the front door.
"He said. ‘Yeah, Dad, I will’," Dermot told Prime Time "about five or ten seconds later, I said ‘Daniel, have you thrown down the key?’ There was no answer."
"I went up the stairs, opened the door. He was passed out in the floor. I could smell the deodorant when I walked into his room, and he'd actually used a sock to inhale the deodorant."
Dermot and his eldest son Adam performed CPR on Daniel until the emergency services arrived. He was taken away in an ambulance, but Daniel was pronounced dead in Temple Street hospital at 1am on 27 September.
"No parents should ever have to see their child dying on the floor, or brother, or sisters, or anybody. Ever. We'll never forget. We are never going to get out of our heads," Yvonne said.
Dermot added that it was "horrific" to have to try to save his own son "knowing he was slipping away".
The Maguires do not believe that Daniel had been inhaling aerosols like this before, but said they can’t be sure. There were no signs that he had been, they say, he was sporty, liked to keep fit and go to the gym.
"For us, he made a mistake," Dermot told Prime Time. "Where did he get the idea from it? We'll never know. People talk about TikTok and stuff like that. We genuinely do not know, what possessed them to do it in the first place."
There have been other recent cases of teenagers dying in similar circumstances. Sarah Mescall from Kilnamona, Co Clare, was also 14 when she died in 2023. A recent coroner's court recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.
A post-mortem examination confirmed that Sarah suffered a cardiac arrest and damage to her heart muscle after inhaling from an aerosol deodorant, dying from a lack of oxygen to the brain.
While the Maguires may be waiting some time to find an exact cause of Daniel’s death, they are speaking out now in the hope that his tragedy might serve as a warning to others.
"It was so prevalent in the '80s and '90s when we were kids. It's back, and it's back with full force. And this is so little talked about," Yvonne said.
"It can kill instantly. That's why the yellow triangle is on the back of the can," she added, "but of course, teenagers know best and just think they're completely invincible. They absolutely are not."
Dermot is urging parents to raise the issue directly with their children: "This is not a social thing, it's not a geographical thing. It can happen to any family at any time."
"Talk to your children. Talk to them. Explain the dangers. Show them Daniel's picture. It's out there, all over social media. Show them his picture. Show them us. I don't want anybody to go through this because of a deodorant.
"We're left devastated. We are absolutely shattered. We don't want this for anybody else. If we can stop one person from doing that, we don't want Daniel to have died in vain."
The full interview with Daniel Maguire's parents Dermot and Yvonne by reporter Conor Wilson and producer/director Isabel Perceval is broadcast on the 28 October edition of Prime Time at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.
