A police officer has died after being rescued from Snowdon, close to where the body of Manchester’s Chief Constable Michael Todd was found in March this year.
Snowdon
Photo: Steve Cadman
PC Anthony Mulhall was airlifted from the mountain on Thursday but died the following day in hospital. PC Mulhall, an officer with the South Yorkshire force, had been missing from his Rotherham home since Wednesday.
Last year, he was removed from public duties after a video showed him repeatedly striking a black woman outside a Sheffield nightclub. He was subsequently cleared of wrongdoing following an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
A spokesman for South Yorkshire Police said: “A mountain rescue team located him on Snowdon on Thursday afternoon and airlifted him to hospital, where he was placed under intensive care. He died at 1.30pm on Friday.”
South Yorkshire Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes said: “This is terrible news and our condolences go out to his family.
“PC Mulhall was highly regarded and will be missed by his colleagues and friends.”
It is understood PC Mulhall’s death is not being treated as suspicious. He had served with South Yorkshire Police for 11 years.
His case gained notoriety when CCTV footage (above) was made public of his arrest of Toni Comer, 21, which showed him repeatedly punching the woman. The IPCC said PC Mulhall had used ‘justified and proportionate force’ in the incident. Ms Comer was later charged and pleaded guilty to causing criminal damage to a car.
PC Mulhall’s death has eerie echoes of the case of Michael Todd, whose body was found below Bwlch Glas on 11 March. Conspiracy theorists immediately seized on the case due to the strange circumstances of Mr Todd’s death, unusual aspects of the search for him and the fact that he had dealt with the investigation into CIA activities in the UK.
The chief constable’s inquest has yet to be heard in full.
In another quirk of fate, PC Mulhall’s disappearance and subsequent discovery would have happened under the noses of the country’s media, who were on the mountain in the middle of the week covering the delay in the opening of Snowdon’s new mountain cafe and visitor centre, Hafod Eryri.
Film crews, reporters and photographers accompanied the Snowdonia National Park authority chairman Aneurin Phillips to see building work on the project which has been hampered by bad weather on the summit, which is not that surprising for a British mountain of 1,085m (3,494ft) height.
PC Mulhall’s cause of death is not yet known.
See also
The curious case of the cop, the Chinook and the men in dark suits
Police chief's body found on Snowdon
