Mother tells of grief at death of `golden boy'

THE MOTHER of a gifted public schoolboy found hanging from a tree at his home spoke yesterday of her grief for her son.

Daniel Kirwan had just celebrated his 16th birthday and received a glowing report from teachers at the pounds 4,000-a-term King's School in Chester.

A day after being told her son was a model pupil with a bright future ahead of him, Pauline Kirwan found him hanging on Wednesday from a tree outside her five-bedroom house in Cheshire.

Fighting back tears, she described her son as a generous youngster, who would give his pocket-money to the homeless on the streets of Chester.

Speaking from her home in Hatton Heath, a few miles from the city, Mrs Kirwan, who is divorced from Daniel's father, said: "Everyone I am speaking to today is calling him golden boy, everyone loved him and adored him - that is what people are saying to me."

Mrs Kirwan said she is at a loss to explain why Daniel, the son of prominent Wirral solicitor David Kirwan, may have taken his own life. If he was lonely, or under pressure of any sort at school she was not aware of it. "He was as bright as a cricket, there was nothing that caused him to do what happened, he was never bullied. We don't know what happened.

"He was a bubbly, happy and positive boy, who thought of everyone but himself."

Daniel, a soccer-mad teenager who played football for his school's third eleven, was due to take 10 GCSEs this summer, and had ambitions to be a sports journalist.

A post-mortem gave the cause of Daniel's death as asphyxia due to hanging and an inquest has been opened and adjourned to a date yet to be fixed.