Fiancée of hit-and-run victim in plea to culprits
THE fiancée of a Deliveroo cyclist who was killed in a hit-and-run has urged those responsible to come forward, saying they ‘have to answer for what they did’.
Thiago Cortes, 28 and originally from Brazil, was struck by a car on North Wall Quay in Dublin at around 10.30pm on Monday while he was on his bicycle.
He died on Tuesday from his injuries, and a vigil was held for the victim on Wednesday on O’Connell Street which drew huge crowds to mourn his death.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, his fiancée Teresa Dantas said: ‘If you did it, please come forward. Be brave and do this.
‘You were driving a car, you hit someone and you left him there to die. Just please say what you did. Come forward.’
An 05-registered Ford Focus – which gardaí believe was bought with cash – with no insurance or tax was left at the scene.
Detectives have already identified the teenage driver following a trawl of CCTV and are closing in on the names of his three passengers.
Speaking later on RTÉ’s Today With Claire Byrne, Ms Dantas told how she only discovered her fiancé was knocked down when a garda answered Mr Cortes’s mobile phone. She had been frantically texting and ringing him all evening after she heard a cyclist had been in an accident and her partner hadn’t returned home.
‘We tried to call him several times with no answer until finally one of the guards that was [at the scene] answered the phone and told me he was knocked down and telling me to go there,’ Ms Dantas said.
‘When we were on our way there, they told me he was alive, but from the tone that I was told that I knew it was something really serious.
Ms Dantas spent Tuesday with her fiancé before he died. The couple were together for six years and had been living in Ireland for around two-and-a-half. Mr Cortes proposed to Ms Dantas in March on her birthday, and she described him as ‘loving and caring’. ronan.smyth@dailymail.ie