Truck driven by father crushed son, 3, to death

A TODDLER was crushed to death when he was thrown from a six-tonne dumper truck being driven by his father.

Donal O’Leary wept in the witness box yesterday as he told Cork City Coroner’s Court how he thought his three-year-old son Stephen must have accidentally flipped the vehicle’s directional switch when he was driving the machine forward, causing it to jolt violently into reverse.

Stephen was thrown from the machine’s platform and crushed under its wheels.

He suffered neck, chest and abdominal trauma and died later in Cork University Hospital (CUH). The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

Mr O’Leary was supervising landscaping works involving two mini-diggers and three dumper trucks on the family home near Crookstown, Co Cork, on March 8 last when the tragedy occurred.

Mr O’Leary began driving one of the single-seat dump trucks and said Stephen, who had been watching in the garden, asked if he could join him on the machine.

The toddler started crying when he said no, so Mr O’Leary lifted him up on to the platform around his seat’s machine. He said he used a trouser belt to secure his son on the right side, away from the controls.

Mr O’Leary got off the dumper later and said when he came back, Stephen had wriggled free of the harness and had moved to the left side, by the controls.

As he was driving the machine forward, it jolted and thew Stephen forward and down between the wheels.

Mr O’Leary jumped off but the machine rolled back and crushed his son.

Garda James O’Brien, a public service vehicle (PSV) inspector from Tralee, tested the direction switch on the truck, and said a driver would have had no time to react if someone was flung forward as Stephen was.

City coroner Dr Myra Cullinane described it as a terrible tragedy for the family: “Everyone feels deeply the pain you feel with the loss of such a little child.”