Garda<\/a> in Dublin, Ireland on March 11, 2026, in connection with the collision.<\/p>\nOn 24 March 2025, Connors was driving a silver Mercedes car when he made off from police and collided with a Toyota car between Belgrave Road and Percy Road in Hightown, Wrexham.<\/p>\n
Lydia La Polla, 47, from Wrexham, the driver of the Toyota car, sadly died from her injuries in Stoke hospital two days later on March 26, 2025.<\/p>\n
Lydia\u2019s husband, a passenger in her car, was serious injured in the collision.<\/p>\n
Connors, and another male in the silver Mercedes, fled the scene of the collision, leaving two young passengers behind in the car.<\/p>\n
One of them, a 16-year-old girl, was also seriously injured.<\/p>\n
In a victim impact statement read out to the court on sentencing, Lydia\u2019s husband said the death of his beloved wife had left him with a \u201cprofound sense of loss\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life will never be the same again,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTo say I am heartbroken is an understatement.<\/p>\n
\u201cLydia was a wonderful mother to our children and they absolutely adored her. It breaks my heart to know that their mother won\u2019t be there for their weddings, and she won\u2019t be there to see them grow up and have children of their own.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur close family unit has been shattered into a thousand pieces, and it will never be the same again without Lydia.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Mugshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0_dpw210926conners.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Michael Connors has been sentenced for causing death by dangerous driving(Image: North Wales Police )<\/p>\n
Lydia\u2019s daughter added that losing her mother is a \u201cpain that words cannot describe.\u201d<\/p>\n
She wrote: \u201cThis collision did not just take my mum from me; it took away the future I always imagined with her in it. It changed my family forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have lost the person who loved me unconditionally, who guided me through life, and who was always there whenever I needed her. No amount of time will ever heal that loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sadness never truly goes away; I have simply had to learn how to carry it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking following sentencing, Chief Superintendent Jaqueline Downes said: \u201cOur deepest sympathies remain with Lydia\u2019s family, who continue to live with the devastating consequences of this incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one should ever leave their home and not return safely.<\/p>\n
\u201cLydia\u2019s family conducted themselves with the utmost dignity throughout this complex and protracted case, and I am grateful to them for their trust in our investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would also like to thank the members of the public who came to assist those at the scene of the collision before the emergency services arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to the prison sentence Connors will now serve, he must live with the knowledge that his actions resulted in Lydia\u2019s death and has caused unimaginable pain to her family, as well as serious injury of two more people.<\/p>\n
“This case demonstrates the very real dangers associated with driving dangerously and we hope this sentence serves as a warning to others about the potentially devastating consequences of such behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Connors, of Landen Road, Ballyfermot, Dublin was arrested after fleeing to Ireland 20:39, 21 Sep 2026Updated 20:49,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-632039","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\/632039","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=632039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1_EGR_170626_LydiaLaPolla.jpg\")
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