Tragic Shiva was in another car crash earlier that night
THE young woman who died in an horrific road crash in Donegal on Sunday was a victim of a car accident just a few hours earlier, it has emerged.
Mother-of-one Shiva Devine was one of two passengers pronounced dead when the car they were in struck a wall and spun back onto the road before hitting a pole in Bundoran in the early hours of Sunday.
It has now emerged that Shiva, who was in her early 20s, had been a passenger in a car that crashed on the Belleek to Garrison road in Fermanagh a few hours before the fatal crash.
Nobody was injured in the Fermanagh incident, in which the car went off the road.
Meanwhile, the family and friends of the other person who died in the accident, Conall McAleer, have been coming to terms with their tragic loss.
The young man, who was also in his early 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene close to the town centre.
All six occupants of the Peugeot 306 car were on their way to Northern Ireland from a night out in the seaside resort when tragedy struck.
Three of the friends are still in hospital and one of them, Rachel Elliott, is said to be in a critical condition.
Ms Elliott, a mother of one, was airlifted from Sligo University Hospital to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin following the incident.
A man in his early 20s arrested in connection with the crash was questioned at Ballyshannon Garda Station on Sunday but was later released without charge.
Shiva’s funeral is due to take place this morning.
Her relatives and friends had the sad task of preparing her residence in Belleek, Co. Fermanagh, for her wake last night, and scores of sympathisers have been gathering to pay their respects to the popular young woman.
A native of Donegal town, she had been living in Belleek for the past three years.
One local in the village said: ‘She was always in the shops and was a lovely, pleasant wee girl.’ The Road Safety Officer for Co. Donegal said yesterday that overloading of cars had become one of their major concerns in the fight against road carnage.
Brian O’Donnell, of Donegal County Council, said the local authority had recently carried out research into the dangerous habits of some car users.
And one of the most worrying findings was the frequency with which large numbers of people were cramming into cars late at night. Mr O’Donnell said this overloading of vehicles in the early hours was of huge concern.
He said: ‘Young people don’t care how they get home as long as they get home. And unfortunately our experience from that is some of them never make it home.
‘They are cramming into cars just to get home, and when there is an accident, we have an unfortunate outcome like this.
‘Instead of picking up the phone to a friend or even to their parents to ask for a lift, they are piling into any type of car because they are desperate to get home.’
In 2010, in the worst single traffic accident in Ireland’s history, eight people were killed between Clonmany and Buncrana on the Inishowen Peninsula in Co. Donegal.
Seven friends were killed in one car and a pensioner coming in the other direction also died.
So far this year, a total of eight people have died on Donegal’s roads, compared to six for all of last year. Post-mortems into the deaths of the two people killed in Sunday’s crash have been carried out at Sligo University Hospital.
Overloading cars ‘a major concern’