A man charged in connection with a hit and run collision that left a young Limerick nurse dead was high on cannabis and \u201cfast gas\u201d, a court has heard.<\/p>\n
The accused, Keelan O\u2019Connell, aged 19, of Scanlon Park, Castleconnell, Co Limerick, was charged before Limerick District Court with dangerous driving causing the death of Aine O\u2019Reilly on February 13 this year.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Connell was also charged with driving without a driver\u2019s licence and with driving without insurance at the same location on the same date.<\/p>\n
Garda Tony Burke of Henry Street garda station gave evidence that he arrested Mr O\u2019Connell at his home at 7.42am on Thursday, March 19. The accused \u201cmade no reply\u201d after charge and caution.<\/p>\n
Members of Ms O\u2019Reilly\u2019s family and the accused’s family sat on separate sides of the courtroom during the contested bail hearing.<\/p>\n
Objecting to bail, Gda Burke alleged that on the night, Mr O\u2019Connell was driving a black coloured 2007 registered \u201chigh-powered\u201d VW Golf with \u201cexcess speed\u201d and he attempted a \u201cdangerous manoeuvre\u201d to undertake a Peugeot car.<\/p>\n
He alleged Mr O\u2019Connell\u2019s VW Golf collided with the Peugeot, forcing the Peugeot into a collision with a Nissan Micra car, which was being driven by Ms O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n
Gda Burke told the court Ms Reilly, who was on her way to her workplace at the out-of-hours GP service, Shannondoc, suffered \u201ccatastrophic injuries\u201d in the collision and was pronounced dead at the scene.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed harvested dashcam footage from the Peugeot car, which showed the fatal collision. It was alleged that Mr O\u2019Connell \u201cfled the scene on foot\u201d along with two occupants from his VW Golf, after it was \u201csignificantly damaged\u201d. Gda Burke also alleged Mr O\u2019Connell \u201cfailed to provide assistance\u201d to the other motorists at the scene.<\/p>\n
Gda Burke gave uncontested evidence that, on the day after the fatal collision, Mr O\u2019Connell presented himself to garda\u00ed and admitted being the driver of the car that caused the fatal collision.<\/p>\n
There is \u201cstrong evidence\u201d against Mr O\u2019Connell, Gda Burke said, which includes independent witnesses, CCTV, and dash cam footage.<\/p>\n
The court heard Mr O\u2019Connell admitted to garda\u00ed that he is \u201caddicted to smoking cannabis\u201d and that \u201che was under the influence of cannabis and \u2018fast gas\u2019\u201d at the time of the fatal collision.<\/p>\n
Gda Burke said he believes that Mr O\u2019Connell would, if granted bail, continue to commit \u201cserious offences\u201d due to his \u201caddiction to drugs\u201d, and that he would \u201ccontinue to drive and pose a serious risk to the public\u201d and that he would not answer the charges in court.<\/p>\n
He agreed with Mr O\u2019Connell\u2019s solicitor, Sarah Ryan, that the accused volunteered himself to garda\u00ed after the collision and that he had cooperated with the investigation.<\/p>\n
In her decision to refuse bail, Judge Patricia Harney said she had to balance that Mr O\u2019Connell, as an accused person, is entitled to the \u201cpresumption of innocence\u201d against the fact he is facing serious charges, \u201cthe most serious being dangerous driving causing death in which a young woman lost her life\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge said she was satisfied the bail objection by Gda Burke is \u201cwell founded\u201d and \u201cshould be accepted\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Connell was remanded in custody to appear before Limerick District Court via video-link for further directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions on March 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man charged in connection with a hit and run collision that left a young Limerick nurse dead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-357153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-courts","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357153","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=357153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}