Man died after crashing car taken from police station

A car, in which a man died in a road traffic accident at the weekend, had been taken without permission from a peninsula garda station.

It is believed the deceased, the sole occupant of the vehicle, had also been involved in a hoax sea rescue alert hours before the accident in West Cork.

The single vehicle accident occurred in the early hours of Saturday on the Beara peninsula.

A local woman reported hearing a loud bang around 3am near Adrigole Bridge on the main road between Glengarriff and the sea port of Castletownbere.

The man who died was named locally as John Foran, aged 41 and a father of two, from the Ballydehob area in West Cork.

It is believed a garda patrol had impounded his car after it was found at Dinish Island, a Department of Marine development facility within the inner harbour at Berehaven.

The island, two miles from Castletownbere, is accessed by a bridge and had been purpose-built for fishing vessels to berth close to fish processing units.

Earlier on Friday, around 9pm, a call had been made from the Dinish Island area to the Irish Coast Guard warning a male had been lost at sea.

As a result, an Irish Coast Guard rescue helicopter from Shannon was tasked to the Castletownbere area along with the RNLI lifeboat and inshore rescue units, stationed locally.

It is believed the call-out was false and the emergency services’ units were later stepped down.

Several hours later, a privately owned vehicle was taken from a parking area beside Castletownbere Garda Station — which has restricted opening hours.

The car was not owned by a member of An Garda Siochána.

However, the vehicle taken without permission was the one involved in the fatal accident on the R572 at Adrigole, 15km from the port town.

Gardaí said the sole occupant of the car was fatally injured when it crashed into a wall.

The man was removed on Saturday afternoon to Cork University Hospital where a postmortem will take place today.

A spokesman for garda headquarters said the office of the Garda Ombudsman Commission was not involved in the investigation.

Investigating gardaí, meanwhile, are appealing for witnesses or any person who may have travelled on the regional road at Adrigole between 2am and 12 noon on Saturday to contact Bantry Garda Station on 027 20860, the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666111 or any garda station.

Meanwhile, the body of a man who fell into a river while out with friends has been recovered.

Gardaí said the victim, who was in his early 50s, drowned in the River Shannon in Athlone, Co Westmeath.

The victim is said to have fallen off the wall of Town Bridge at around 11.30pm on Saturday.

His remains were recovered in the early hours of the morning by search teams and the body was removed to the Midland Regional Hospital Mullingar for a postmortem.

Gardaí are investigating the incident.

Meanwhile, a postmortem is also due to be carried out today on the body of an angler whose remains were recovered from the sea at Howth on Saturday.