A BLIND adventurer and medal-winning rower from Co Down is suing his friends after he was paralysed following a fall from their second floor window.
Mark Pollock (39), from Holywood, is taking legal action against Enda and Madeline Cahill in the High Court in London following the fall at their home in Henley in July 2010.
Now based in Dublin, Mr Pollock lost his sight aged 22 in 1998 but won bronze and silver medals at the 2002 Commonwealth Rowing Championships and became the first blind man to reach the South Pole.
He has also taken part in extreme marathons, Ironman events and a yacht race around Ireland.
The High Court heard earlier this week that Mr Pollock suffered a "catastrophic spinal cord injury" when he fell 25 feet on to a patio on July 2 2010.
The accident happened weeks before he was due to marry his fiancée Simone George.
He told the court he does not "remember anything" about falling from the window but said it was likely that he tripped on his way to the toilet.
Mr Pollock believes the Cahills were negligent to leave a window open.
His lawyer told the court the Cahills had ignored a "reasonably foreseeable risk" of their blind friend being injured and should have closed the window in his room or told him it was open.
However the Cahills, of Remenham Lane, Henley, deny the accident was their fault.
Madeline Cahill (42) told the court she was "worried" about Mr Pollock using the stairs up to his second-floor room, but had not thought the open window posed any risk.
"If it had crossed my mind for an instant that there was any danger or risk, I would have insisted Mark stay in the conservatory," she told the court.
But she agreed that, "with hindsight", she wished she had closed the window.
She added: "I was constantly going through in my mind if there was anything I could have done to prevent the accident".
The Cahills' lawyer put it to him that he had told friends after the fall that he believed "he may have been climbing out of a hatch on board a yacht" as he went through the window.
But Mr Pollock denied the suggestion.
"I have heard people speculate in all sorts of ways about how I ended up like this," he said.
He said no one had mentioned the window was open when he was shown the room.
But Mr Cahill (47) told the court he remembered describing "where the beds were in relation to the window".
The High Court hearing continues