This article is from page 8 of the 2008-10-21 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 8 JPG
A TEN-YEAR-OLD girl has sus- tained severe brain injury after she was hit by a car while crossing the road in Ennis.
The grave extent of the girl’s in- juries emerged last week, when the driver involved in the accident ap- peared in court.
The young girl had just waved to her friends, whilst crossing the road, when she was struck. She was flipped into the air and landed at a back wheel of the car and lost consciousness.
She sustained serious injuries and continues to receive medical treat- ment.
Sharon Shanahan (33), of Killura, Ennistymon, pleaded not guilty to driving without due care and atten- tion and at the end of the contested case at Ennis District Court, she was found not guilty by the judge.
The accident occurred close to the intersection between Circular Road and Childers Road, Ennis, at 5.50pm on February 25 last.
The girl’s 10-year-old friend re- called, in court, spending time with the young girl immediately before the accident. She had called to his house in that area to collect a mobile je) ateyaten
He said he, the 10-year-old girl and another friend, aged 12, walked across the road. “We stopped half way and she went forward. We went back. She turned around and waved back. I saw a car coming,’ he re- or Naeem
He said the 12-year-old girl called out the 10-year-old’s name. “She got hit. I think it was her head that hit the window. She slid across the car. She landed a foot away from the path. She was saying Oww and all that,” said the boy.
“She just got hit and the phone was on the grass. My dad said not to move her in case she had broken her neck,” he added.
The boy said the car was going “very fast.” “It went too fast. All I could see was a red car and a woman with blonde hair in it. If the car was going a little slower, I don’t think she would have gone into the air so high,” he explained.
He said he felt the driver probably thought the little girl would move, “but she didn’t.”
Under cross-examination from de- fending solicitor Stephen Nicholas, the boy said he was certain that the girl was waving at him. “She must have been on the footpath?” asked
Mr Nicholas, to which the boy re- plied, “No.”
“Why would she stand on the road and turn around and wave’? It is very dangerous to stop on the road and wave, said the solicitor. The boy said, “There were no cars coming.”
Mr Nicholas noted that the boy had said in court that the car had been travelling at speed. “It is a very 1m- portant fact but you never said to the guards anything about the car going fast,” he said. The boy replied, “But it did go fast.”
The 12-year-old girl who was also there that evening told the court the 10-year-old was about a step or two away from the edge of the footpath when she was hit. “She waved before she got to the footpath,” she said.
Lisa Russell (25) told the court she was driving behind Ms Shanahan’s
car that evening. Asked to recall the accident, she said, “There were two kids on the right hand side and as I looked at the left, I couldn’t see the child’s head. I could see her body. She was hovering as such. She was flung around. She ended up in a ball at the back tyre.”
Asked about the manner of driving, she said, “I didn’t take any notice to be honest.”
The court heard that Ms Shana- han’s Ford Focus car was damaged in the impact – the front bonnet was dented, while the lower part of the windscreen was cracked.
Garda Joseph Ryan, who attended the scene of the accident, said the little girl was unconscious. She was immediately taken to Ennis General eevee
A statement made by the driver,
Ms Shanahan, was read to the court. In it, she said she was driving to the Adult Education Centre on the Kil- rush Road, when she took a wrong turn and ended up in the Cloughleigh area. She said she was unfamiliar with the area. She saw children and the next thing she could recall was a child hitting her windscreen. She stopped and got out of her car. The girl was lying on the ground at the back passenger wheel. Ms Shanahan was in deep shock and started to col- lapse.
“T do not know how the girl came in contact with my car. I was driving normally and concentrating at the time,” she said.
Garda Ryan said that with her consent, he checked Ms Shanahan’s mobile phone and it showed that no phone calls had been made and no
text messages had been sent at the time of the accident.
Mr Nicholas put it to him that the public service vehicle (PSV) inspec- tor’s report would suggest the impact was at low speed and the garda ac- cepted this.
Gda Ryan said that the girl received serious injuries as a result of the ac- cident. A medical report said she has suffered severe brain injury.
She is alert, but disorientated and is currently undergoing physiotherapy and speech therapy.
Sharon Shanahan told the court she has been driving for nine years and was never in court before.
Asked did she see the little girl, she replied, “No.”
“T was going pretty slow. I wasn’t sure where I was,” she said. She said she could not explain how the acci- dent had happened.
Inspector Tom Kennedy, prosecut- ing, put it to her if she was taking ad- equate care and attention, she would have seen the girl. She replied, “I was driving with care and attention. I’ve no idea where she came from.”
Mr Nicholas noted that the girl sus- tained “horrific injuries, but that is not what the case is about. It’s about Whether the accused was driving without due care and attention.”
He said the boy was mistaken in saying there was speed involved, adding, “Maybe the children are mistaken when they say where she was on the road.”
Judge Joseph Mangan said the ac- cident was “very unfortunate” and he sympathised with the little girl’s family. He said that Ms Russell was to be commended, but “nothing she has said will enlighten us to the de- fendant’s manner of driving.”
He said that while the boy suggest- ed the car was moving fast, he had not referred to this in his statement at the time of the accident. “It’s too vague,’ Said the judge.
He said, crucially, the little girl was not in court “for obvious rea- sons” and said her injuries were not relevant as to whether the defendant was culpable.
“In all the circumstances, I have to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt before I convict somebody. On no ac- count can I say I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt,’ he said and dis- missed the charge.