Man dies as car crashes through wall into tree

A HOUSE OWNER described how helpless he felt after a car containing three people spun out of control, ploughed through a wall and ended up overturned in his front garden.

“I knew one of them was dead by the time I got out. I could do nothing because the car was turned upside down and crushed down on top of them,” Michael Hayes said.

Mr Hayes and his wife Mary were woken by a loud noise at 5.30am yesterday after the car veered out of control on the main Dublin to Cork road and ploughed through the wall of their front garden at Rathcormac, Co Cork.

He immediately dialled 999 but could do little else but wait for the emergency services to arrive. “It’s not something you like to wake up to,” Mr Hayes said.

A fire brigade unit from the nearby town of Fermoy had to cut the dead and injured from the wreckage of the Volkswagen Polo estate.

A man, believed to be an English national and in his mid 40s, was pronounced dead at the scene. He was a passenger in the car. Gardaí said they would not be releasing his name until all his relatives had been informed. His death brings to 309 the number of people killed on Irish roads this year.

The driver of the car, a woman in her 20s and believed to be from Mayfield, Cork, suffered serious head injuries.

Another male passenger, also in his 20s and from the Mayfield area, was also seriously injured. Both were rushed to Cork University Hospital. A Southern Health Board spokeswoman said the injured man and woman were in a critical condition.

Mr Hayes said the car hit a tree in his garden otherwise it would have ploughed into his home at Curraghprevin, about two miles south of the village of Rathcormac.

The car had been travelling in the direction of Cork city when the accident happened. Gardaí believe that road conditions may have been slippery in the area at the time.

“We are appealing for anybody who might have been in the area to contact us,” a Garda spokesman said. Information to Fermoy gardaí at (025) 31222.