A car fire which killed a racehorse trainer was likely started by “smoking material coming into contact with ignitable material” in the vehicle, an inquest has heard.
Hugh Mulryan was found dead in the driver’s seat of his vehicle at the side of Marishes Lane near Malton, North Yorkshire, at about 04:30 BST on 16 June 2025.
Originally from Galway, Ireland, the 25-year-old had arrived in England two days earlier and was due to begin a job as an assistant trainer on the morning of his death.
In his conclusion, assistant coroner Jonathan Leach said the death had been accidental.
The inquest heard that Mulryan had met with his new employer, Adrian Keatley, on the evening of 15 June at the Spotted Cow pub in Malton.
In a report read to the hearing in Northallerton, Keatley said Mulryan had a packet of cigarettes with him.
He left the pub at approximately 22:00, Keatley said, having consumed “four or five pints of Guinness” but that he “did not appear to be drunk at all and was still quite with it”.
He was due to return to the house where he was renting a spare room, owned by a friend of a friend, who received a text from him at 21:40 confirming he would secure a gate when he arrived.
At approximately 23:00, a man described as being “a white male in his 20s or 30s” was involved in a collision near the junction of the A169 and the A64, the inquest was told.
Two tourists from Liverpool said a dark-coloured VW Passat with Irish registration plates which had been “going against the flow of the traffic” on a roundabout collided with them.
The driver “seemed very calm overall, very chilled, maybe too chilled”, a statement made by one of the tourists said.
The man then left the scene, going back in the direction he had come from, heading northbound on the A169.
