Driver gets suspended term after friend died in crash

A YOUNG car enthusiast wept and thumped his head with his hands as he told gardaí he’d killed his best friend in a road crash, a court heard yesterday.

Phelim Coady, who was 20 at the time, was found in tears alongside the body of Stephen Gleeson when officers arrived at the scene of the early morning crash in the townland of Garrykennedy, Co. Tipperary.

Mr Gleeson had been thrown from the car’s rear window after it hit a bend and careered across a country road before overturning on June 30, 2019, at 5am. The three other occupants of the 1995registered Toyota Starlet, including Coady, were uninjured.

On October 7, 2020, Judge Patrick Meghan sentenced Coady, of Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, to two years and six months’ imprisonment, which the judge suspended after the accused pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death, and driving a dangerously deficient vehicle.

Coady – who was also banned from driving for four years – had also admitted to being intoxicated and under the influence of alcohol and cannabis, and driving without insurance, at the time of the offence.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal was told the Director Public Prosecutions was appealing the sentence on the grounds it was unduly lenient.

Dylan Redmond BL, for the DPP, told Judge John Edwards, presiding, that Judge Meghan had failed had to give sufficient weight to aggravating factors.

William O’Brien BL, for Coady, told the three-court judge that the fact that three of the occupants walked away from the car uninjured suggested there was ‘an element of freak fatality’ about the crash.

When gardaí arrived at the scene, Coady was bashing his head and saying, ‘I have killed my best friend’, Mr O’Brien added.

After hearing submissions, Judge Edwards said Coady had been ‘highly intoxicated’ and that ‘there has to be consequences’.

Reserving the case for judgment, the judge also extended the sympathies of the court to Mr Gleeson’s family and friends.