Alone in the dark

When a taxi driver and her female passenger fell victim to a terrifying ordeal, nothing in the way of investigating a crime was undertaken by gardaí, says Special Correspondent Michael Clifford

IT WAS going on for 3.30am when Lorraine Browne picked up her fares outside the Roma chipper in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan. Ms Browne ran, and still runs, a minibus taxi service out of Kingscourt in Co Cavan. About 10 people boarded her mini-bus. The mood was good, but finely balanced, in the early hours of February 25, 2007.

She told everybody that she was going to Kingscourt, which is 13km from Carrickmacross. Among the group on the bus were four men whom she didn’t know. Later, she would estimate that they were in their late 20s, or maybe early 30s.