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Answering Door During Storm Fatal

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By PATRINA A. BOSTIC

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: June 14, 2008

EAST MANATEE - When 69-year-old Brian Duffy heard something at his front door Thursday afternoon, he went to check on it.

As he opened the door to his Tara Golf and Country Club home, he was met with wind so forceful that it knocked the 6-foot-2, 180-pound man onto the floor and blew out a window.

He suffered a heart attack there, on a floor wet from heavy rain, and later died.

His wife, Nedra, who could not stop crying Friday, said her husband would still be alive if not for the freak accident.

She said her husband, an affable Irishman, had a pre-existing heart condition, but had a checkup about a week ago and was told he was fine.

The storm caused his death, she said.

"I don't think he would be dead if that wouldn't have happened," she said.

"What happened put him in shock."

Despite her opinion, Russell S. Vega, chief medical examiner in Manatee and Sarasota counties, ruled that Duffy's death stemmed from natural causes.

However, Vega said, it is reasonable to conclude that stress from the storm that blew through East Manatee aggravated Duffy's heart condition.

Duffy would likely be considered a storm-related casualty if the governor had declared a state of emergency, such as after a hurricane, Vega said.

Paul Close, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said hail the size of a half-dollar and 70 mph winds hit the east Manatee area about 3:15 p.m. Thursday, wrecking pool cages and downing some trees in the Tara area southwest of State Road 70 and Interstate 75.

The hail and the wind likely were what Duffy heard at his door in the 6500 block of Drewry's Bluff.

Nedra Duffy, a real estate agent in the Sarasota area for 30 years, was driving home after the storm hit. She got home about 5:30 p.m. with plans to go to dinner with her husband.

But she found him lying on the floor, crying out for her to call 911. He told her his pelvis or abdomen area was hurting.

The ambulance came, but when Nedra Duffy joined her husband at the hospital, he was already dead.

Duffy was a retired police chief in Ireland before moving to Sarasota in 1992, and later to the Tara subdivision.

Nedra Duffy stopped crying and chuckled as she described her husband as a "crazy Irish man."

"He was a happy, outgoing, friendly Irish person," she said. "He was just a lovely man; we had a wonderful life."

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