A man who was disqualified from driving for 20 years when he fatally injured a 14-year-old boy in a hit-and-run has been told his driving licence will be restored in mid-2027.<\/p>\n
Ruadhan Tracey, 44, of Lagore Green, Dunshaughlin, Co Meath, received a 20-month sentence in 2014 after he pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to careless driving causing the death of Conor Hickey at Faussagh Road, in Cabra, on 2 December 2011.<\/p>\n
He also admitted a charge of failing to remain at the scene of an accident.<\/p>\n
The maximum penalty available to the court was two years and the maximum penalty available for leaving the scene of an accident was 16 months.<\/p>\n
Detective Garda Jonathan Brady confirmed at an earlier hearing that Conor Hickey’s family and the garda\u00ed are opposed to the restoration of Tracey\u2019s driving license.<\/p>\n
At that 2014 sentence hearing, then Judge Mary Ellen Ring said she was bound by the legislation before she imposed the prison term and disqualified Tracey from driving for 20 years.<\/p>\n
Pieter Le Vert BL, prosecuting, said today that under Section 29 of the Road Traffic Act 1961, a person can apply for restoration of their driving licence after half of the period of disqualification has passed.<\/p>\n
He noted that if the court made the order, it must set a date which is two-thirds of the way through the period, which would be in May 2027 in this case.<\/p>\n
He said that Tracey, who has no previous disqualification, is eligible to make the application under the criteria outlined in the act.<\/p>\n
Judge Orla Crowe said there were “very tragic circumstances” in this case, and that as a result of Tracey’s careless driving, he caused the death of a 14-year-old child, whose loss is undoubtedly still felt by his family.<\/p>\n
The judge noted a submission made by the Director of Public Prosecutions that the disqualification was the only penalty, as Tracey was serving another sentence at the time of his 20-month sentence.<\/p>\n
However, she said disqualification “is not a penalty, but an ancillary order made by the court”.<\/p>\n
She said the fact that Tracey was serving another sentence at the time did not take away that he did serve 20 months for what “must have been a terrible tragedy”.<\/p>\n
The judge said the court had considered the matter and was of the view that it was appropriate to restore Tracey’s driving licence.<\/p>\n
She said he has “forged a different bond with society since 2018” and “people are entitled to make their sincerest effort to rehabilitate”.<\/p>\n
Judge Crowe directed that Tracey’s driving licence should be restored from 12 May 2027.<\/p>\n
During a hearing last month, Mr Le Vert outlined the evidence heard in the previous sentence hearing.<\/p>\n
He said Tracey admitted that he had borrowed his girlfriend\u2019s car that day and he and a friend had driven into the city to buy heroin.<\/p>\n
Det Gda Brady told the court that the road was wet that evening and Tracey\u2019s passenger told him he had “hit somebody”.<\/p>\n
Tracey continued to drive at speed before he parked up his car and went to buy the drugs. He was arrested almost three weeks later.<\/p>\n
The court heard 14-year-old Conor Hickey suffered serious injuries when he was struck by the car. He died the following day.<\/p>\n
On arrest, Tracey told garda\u00ed that he had taken his eyes off the road and he remembered “a thud”.<\/p>\n
He said he had taken methadone that day and the reason he drove off was because he had no licence or insurance.<\/p>\n
Tracey had 54 previous convictions at the time for robbery, drug and road traffic offences.<\/p>\n
He has since received three further convictions in 2017 and 2018 for theft and interfering with an ATM.<\/p>\n
Det Gda Brady accepted he has not come to garda attention since those more recent convictions and was in employment for a period of time.<\/p>\n
Tracey, who was representing himself in court, asked Judge Crowe to grant his application to have his licence restored.<\/p>\n
“I am trying to live the rest of my life to the best of my ability without harming others,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said he had been offered a job and the “driving licence would be helpful” before he reminded the court that he had not been in trouble since 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who was disqualified from driving for 20 years when he fatally injured a 14-year-old boy in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-279155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279155","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=279155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}