{"id":119547,"date":"2025-10-13T15:51:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T15:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/119547\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T15:51:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T15:51:20","slug":"death-of-belfast-man-in-thailand-devastating-family-say-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/119547\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of Belfast man in Thailand \u2018devastating\u2019, family say \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sudden death of a Belfast man in Thailand<\/a> has been described as \u201cdevastating\u201d by his family<\/p>\n

Cillian McMinn (28), who was from the Rosetta area of south Belfast, died in Bangkok on Sunday, October 5.<\/p>\n

His remains are set to repose at his family home from Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Mr McMinn is survived by his mother Anna, aunt Keavy, grandmother Joanna and grandfather Joe. <\/p>\n

\"Mary<\/a>\"Mary<\/a><\/p>\n

Anna said her son, who was a keen traveller, had only been in Thailand for a short time as he made his way to Vietnam.<\/p>\n

She said she doesn\u2019t know how her son died but that an autopsy has been carried out and it may take up to three months for Thai authorities to produce a \u201cfull report\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we do not know what happened,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hadn\u2019t heard from him in a day, which wasn\u2019t that unusual.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut a friend of his contacted me worried that he hadn\u2019t heard from him in 24 hours, so there was a couple of people worried about him, including myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anna and her mother Joanna flew to Thailand last week and because insurance was in place they were able to return to Belfast with his Cillian\u2019s remains within days.<\/p>\n

Despite this they have asked for donations to be made to The Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust\u2014which assists families in returning their loved ones\u2019 remains to Ireland following an overseas death\u2014in lieu of flowers.<\/p>\n

More than \u00a31,100 has been raised so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just thought it was an appropriate cause for somebody less fortunate than us that finds themselves in this situation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mr McMinn made headlines a decade ago when as an 18-year-old he raised more than \u00a390,000 from crowd funding for a business idea to devise \u2018The Element Cube\u2019, which contained over 60 elements in one compact cube and could be made into jewellery. <\/p>\n

The teenager had left school two years earlier without completing his A-levels.<\/p>\n

Anna described the time as a \u201cvery proud moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe left Aquinas at 16 and quietly went off and did that himself, without any of us or anyone else knowing, no support from anywhere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a serial inventor and entrepreneur and had multiple ideas like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very creative, he was very artistic\u2026he was inventing stuff from he was a kid, constantly inventing things, constantly having business ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the one that was implemented\u2014a teenager and a laptop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr McMinn\u2019s aunt Keavy paid her own tribute on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome tragic news,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy nephew Cillian died last week, while traveling in Thailand. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was such a smart, creative, brave kid. 28 years old. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a devastating loss for our family and all of his friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cRest in peace, kiddo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Described by his mother as a \u201cmilitant atheist\u201d, Mr McMinn\u2019s remains will be removed from his home on Thursday and brought to Antrim and Newtownabbey Crematorium for a humanist service to celebrate his life at 1pm. <\/p>\n

To make a donation to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust please visit: https:\/\/cillianmcminn.muchloved.com\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sudden death of a Belfast man in Thailand has been described as \u201cdevastating\u201d by his family Cillian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[43444,663,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,391,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-119547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-bangkok","9":"tag-belfast","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-breakingnews","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-thailand","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}