‘We’ve been a broken family since this’

THE McGowan family visit their son Robert’s grave every Sunday. Nine months after he was killed by a joyrider, the pain of his death is still too much to bear.

“We’ve been a broken family since this happened. We go to the graveyard every Sunday and break down every Sunday. My wife is a nervous wreck over it.

“Robert has left a three-year-old son who keeps asking for his father,” Patrick McGowan said yesterday.

He was speaking after 17-year-old Ross Byrne was jailed for seven years for the manslaughter of his son, who was a taxi driver.

Byrne, who has 48 previous convictions, was behind the wheel of the car that killed Robert McGowan and a 16-year-old friend.

Byrne and two accomplices, James Daly, 17 and Edward Gavin, 16, were involved in a high-speed chase with gardaí through Dublin’s inner city for almost an hour on January 11, 2003.

At times, driving on the wrong side of the road and with the lights off, they sped through a red light at the junction of the North Circular Road and Portland Row smashing into the passenger side of a taxi driven by Mr McGowan.

The taxi was lifted off the ground, smashing into railings. Mr McGowan (30) had to be cut from the vehicle.

He was taken to Beaumont Hospital where he was later pronounced dead. Mr Gavin, the back seat passenger in the stolen car, was taken to St James’ Hospital where he died three days later.

Byrne, from Clanranald Road, Donnycarney, pleaded guilty to unlawfully killing Mr McGowan on January 11, 2003, and to unlawfully killing Mr Gavin on January 14, 2003.

He almost admitted unlawfully taking the car without the owner’s consent on January 11, 2003.

Daly, from Gloucester Place, Dublin 1, was jailed for three years after he pleaded guilty to allowing himself to be carried in a stolen vehicle on January 11, 2003. He has 35 previous convictions, seven for stealing cars.

Judge Desmond Hogan at Dublin Circuit Criminal lifted a prohibition he had earlier placed on naming Byrne and Daly following applications on behalf of the Irish Examiner, Independent Newspapers and RTÉ.

Inspector Anthony Gallagher told the court Byrne and Daly were only 16 at the time and one of them described the incident as “a joyriding escapade that went wrong”.

Judge Hogan said Byrne pleaded guilty to two very serious offences which have had and would continue to have long-term consequences not only for himself and his family but for the families of Mr McGowan and Mr Gavin.