Seven years for killing woman after speeding through red light

A FAMILY was left “utterly devastated and heartbroken” by the death of a 26-year-old woman killed by an out-of-control Polish-born driver who sped through a red light after a night out drinking whiskey, vodka and beer.

Lukasz Lachowski, aged 26, of 1 Edward Court, Edward Street, Kilmallock, Co Limerick, was jailed for seven years at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on a charge of dangerous driving causing the death of Gillian Drinan.

The accident occurred as the deceased drove from a boreen onto the Commons Road, Cork, on August 24 last.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin told the accused: “Your driving before the accident was furious and dangerous.

“In relation to drink, the readings are high. Your lack of recollection of what happened from Parnell Place [two and a half miles from the scene of the fatal accident] I put down to drink consumption rather than the effects of the accident.

“The total irony is she did everything right, driving carefully, attending to her car, careful in her consumption and she gets killed by someone who does everything wrong. It seems almost a perversion of justice. Those factors will cause her family to grieve forever.”

William and Ann Drinan, parents of the deceased, said in a victim impact statement: “Words cannot express the pain. Gillian was always so full of life and love and she was madly in love with John-Paul [Chisholm, her partner who she was planning to marry].

“Her room is exactly the way she left it that night. It is not right to be burying your child, she should be burying us. Part of us still thinks she might just come in the door. We cannot cope without her.”

Tom Creed, SC, said the defendant wrote a letter of apology to the late Ms Drinan’s parents and he never applied for bail as he wanted to atone for what he had done. A concurrent six-month sentence was imposed on him for drink driving and he was banned from driving for 20 years.