A man who pleaded guilty to drink driving and to dangerous driving causing the deaths his two friends in Co Limerick is due to be sentenced on Friday.<\/p>\n
Patrick Carroll, aged 22, with an address at Drinagh Fivealley, Birr, Co Offaly, appeared before Judge Simon McAleese at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The court heard Mr Carroll asked his legal counsel to surrender his bail, so sentencing could go ahead, despite the ongoing solicitor strike.<\/p>\n
Darragh Dullea, aged 21, from Clonakilty, Co Cork, and Cillian Kirwan, aged 19, from Piltown, Co Kilkenny, died in the incident on the N69 at Ballyengland, near Askeaton, on February 20, 2024.<\/p>\n
The car, driven by Mr Carroll, struck a wall. Mr Carroll and a third passenger required hospital treatment.<\/p>\n
Mr Carroll previously pleaded guilty to three counts. One of dangerous driving causing the death of Mr Dullea, the second for dangerous driving causing the death of Mr Kirwan, and the third for driving under the influence of alcohol.<\/p>\n
Prosecuting barrister, Lily Buckley told the court there was an \u201cearly intention to plead guilty\u201d from Mr Carroll.<\/p>\n
Ms Buckey said the two fatalities were on the passenger\u2019s side of the car.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard how witnesses at the scene described how the driver, Mr Carroll, was \u201cshouting\u201d, saying \u201cWake up Darragh\u201d.<\/p>\n
Evidence found it was clear all passengers were wearing seatbelts at the time of the incident, and that airbags were deployed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard how Mr Carroll lost control of the vehicle.<\/p>\n
Mr Carroll’s counsel, Brian McInerney, said his client has been \u201cfully cooperative at all stages\u201d of the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said Mr Carroll made a \u201cvery poor decision\u201d on the night of the incident.<\/p>\n
In her victim impact\u2019s statement, Mr Kirwan\u2019s mother, Sin\u00e9ad Molloy, told the court her daughter \u00c1ine is the one who was at home when garda\u00ed came to their home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As her daughter didn\u2019t open the door, she was informed of the incident on the phone.<\/p>\n
She described her son as a \u201cbeautiful boy\u201d, who had a \u201cbright future ahead of him\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms Molloy said \u201cnothing could have prepared me for this\u201d when she identified her son after the incident, whom was \u201cunrecognisable\u201d.<\/p>\n
The second statement was read by Ms Buckley on behalf of Mr Dullea’s family and written by his sister Aoife.<\/p>\n
She described Darragh as a brave young man, whose death has \u201ccaused unimaginable pain\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have spent the last two and a half years surviving. Surviving the tremendous grief that greets us every morning and tucks us into bed each night, imagining the \u2018what ifs\u2019.”<\/p>\n
In mitigation, Mr McInerney asked the judge to consider the absence of previous convictions and said his client has shown \u201cgenuine remorse\u201d throughout the proceedings.<\/p>\n
He added Mr Carroll knows his actions resulted in his two friends passing away and that he hopes the families will take some degree of comfort knowing he acknowledges the hurt caused.<\/p>\n
Judge McAleese told both families he will ensure to \u201ctake note of the victim impact statements\u201d and do so as \u201cpromptly as I can\u201d.<\/p>\n
He adjourned sentencing to Friday at 10.30am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who pleaded guilty to drink driving and to dangerous driving causing the deaths his two friends…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-528171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-courts","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528171","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=528171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}