Driver’s wife: ‘I killed him. I took hope away from him’

It was her request for them to separate that sent him to his death, according to the distraught wife of the suicidal Polish taxi driver who caused multiple deaths when he deliberately ploughed into the car of a Cork family.

Agnieszka Wojiechowska, 26, said she found the suicide note left by her husband, Marek, following an argument which culminated in her asking him to move out of the family home.

Ms Wojciechowska was interviewed at Torquay police station a week after the multiple tragedy that ultimately claimed the lives of Con Twomey, 39, his 16-month-old son Oisín, and his unborn daughter, Elber Marie, in the UK in July last year.

Speaking through a Polish interpreter, she described how the couple had been arguing and how she had asked him to move out of their home: “Marek wasn’t coping well. He didn’t kill himself. I killed him. I took hope away from him. I took everything away from him.”

The couple had both worked at the Toorak Hotel in Torquay. Mr Wojiechowski worked as a kitchen porter and later as a chef and his wife Aga worked as a house keeper.

They started having financial problems and three weeks before he died he started a new job working six nights a week for Torbay Taxis.

On the fateful day when the Twomey family, from Meelin, Co Cork, fell victim to his suicidal act, police were on the lookout for Mr Wojiechowski, listing him as a high-risk missing person after his wife found the suicide note.

It said he didn’t blame his wife, loved his children, and was sorry that things hadn’t worked out.

Friends told how she was hysterical and unable to talk when she found the four-page note after asking him for a separation.

Mr Wojiechowski subsequently drove his taxi into the Twomey family’s Volkswagen Golf. Con Twomey died 10 months later as a result of his injuries and wife, Elber, who was 24 weeks pregnant, lost her baby. Oisín died at the scene.

Retired coroner and forensic physician Dr Nigel Garbutt was one of the first at the scene and tried to revive the toddler by giving mouth-to-mouth.

“I saw the child strapped in to a forward facing child safety seat. A police officer was reaching over the crash barrier. I managed to open a door to get access to the child. The child was not breathing and not responsive. At that point the child was clearly dead.”

Despite that diagnosis, doctors and paramedics fought for the next hour to try to resuscitate the little boy.