Friends look on helplessly as man dies in car plunge

A 36-YEAR-OLD Limerick man died in the early hours of Saturday morning as two friends watched in horror as they and a Garda tried valiantly to free him from the submerged car in which he was trapped.

Neil McNelis, originally from Ashbrook Grove on the Ennis Road in Limerick city, died in his car after he accidentally reversed into a canal in Killaloe, Co Clare. One of two men who were with the victim, but not in the car at the time, jumped into the water in a vain attempt to rescue their friend.

The Trinity College Dublin graduate had been working in the capital for a number of years and lived in Stepaside in south Co Dublin. He had been attending the ‘afters’ of a wedding at a nearby hotel on the Ballina side of the River Shannon prior to the accident.