Crash kills three close friends, injures fourth

A Co Laois community is grief-stricken after three friends from the locality died in a horror crash over the weekend.

Rathdowney residents, Martin Brophy, who was 20, and neighbours Angela Kelly, who was in her 30s, and Orla Curry, in her 20s, all died when their car hit a sign between Abbeyleix and Rathdowney.

A fourth passenger, a 16- year-old boy, was taken to hospital but is expected to make a full recovery. The three, who regularly socialised together, had celebrated another friend’s 21st birthday and it is believed they were on their way to a service station at Ballacolla to pick up fast food when the crash happened at around 3am yesterday.