Twenty-five years ago, as a long summer drew to a close, a night out ended in tragedy. It changed the lives of four young men forever, ending another's far too soon. It happened in an unlikely place, the leafy, affluent suburb of Donnybrook in south Dublin. A fight broke out among a group of young men outside Anabel's nightclub. When it was over, 18-year-old Brian Murphy lay on the ground. Hours later, he was pronounced dead.
On August 31, 2000, an 18-year-old boy died after being beaten and kicked outside a Dublin 4 nightclub Twenty-five years ago today, just before 5am, Brian Murphy was pronounced dead in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin. He was just a couple of kilometres from his home in Clonskeagh. He was less than a couple of kilometres from the Burlington Hotel, where two hours earlier paramedics found him badly beaten, his face cut and bleeding.