A young man, who caused the death of his friend, Ross Rice, through dangerous driving, has been remanded in custody until the 11h of December.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jake Kelly (21) was 19 years old when the car he was driving collided with a tractor and trailer set which was stationary at a set of temporary traffic lights on the R403 in Cellbridge, Kildare on the 18th of July 2023 after 10pm.<\/p>\n
The court heard that on the night in question, Kelly and Rice (pictured) had agreed to meet up to go hunting, and that Kelly was driving the victim\u2019s car as Rice had been disqualified.<\/p>\n
There were independent eyewitnesses to the crash, however residents \u201cheard a bang\u201d before going to investigate the source of the noice reported seeing Kelly get out of the vehicle through the driver side window before he left the scene.<\/p>\n
Judge Martina Baxter questioned whether Kelly had tried to call his friend\u2019s phone after he fled the scene, after hearing that, because the car was partially under the trailer due to the impact, Kelly may not have been able to see him.<\/p>\n
The court heard that after the crash, Kelly called Rice\u2019s sister telling her that there had been an accident and that he was \u201cin bits\u201d but didn\u2019t go to hospital.<\/p>\n
Kelly, who was on bail at the time, said he was \u201cafraid he would be locked up\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the 26th of July the accused was located at his girlfriend\u2019s home in Tallaght, and when Garda\u00ed enquired after the clothes he was wearing on the night of the crash, he directed them to where they could be found through his mother.<\/p>\n
Judge Baxter heard that there was cannabis involved at the time of the incident and that, although Kelly has reduced his use of the drugs, he has not given it up completely.<\/p>\n
His defending counsel, David Stanton, argued that the crash has had an \u201cimpact on Mr. Kelly has been quite profound\u201d and that he has \u201ca profound understanding of the loss of life caused by his actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that Kelly visits the grave of his friend and that he has been \u201cseverely depressed since the incident\u201d and would \u201calmost have preferred if he had died instead\u201d<\/p>\n
Having read a number of victim impact statements handed to the court by members of Mr. Rice\u2019s family, Judge Baxter adjourned sentencing until the 11th of December next while expressing her \u201cdeepest sympathies\u201d to the family, who were in court.<\/p>\n
She ordered that Kelly be remanded in custody until the next date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A young man, who caused the death of his friend, Ross Rice, through dangerous driving, has been remanded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54,89737,61,60,43,89738],"class_list":{"0":"post-160179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-dangerous-driving","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-ross-rice"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}