Checkpoint nabs driver in 3 minutes
Mourners told how tragic collision victims loved their cars
Gardai stop a vehicle
Crime and Defence Editor, in Kilkenny
GARDAI mounted a rural bank holiday checkpoint yesterday morning – and arrested a suspected drink-driver within three minutes.
The motorist was detained after he failed a roadside breath test at around 11.10am on the outskirts of Kilkenny City.
The Irish Mirror was present for the hour-long checkpoint – which saw officers from the Waterford/kilkenny/carlow divisional roads policing carry out mandatory testing for drink and drug-driving.
Some 55 motorists were tested in the checkpoint – one of around 80 mounted by gardai in the division between Friday and yesterday.
Of those stopped by officers, only one man failed the roadside test.
The man, who is aged in his 30s, was arrested when he failed the hand-held Garda breathalyser.
Inspector Paul Donohoe, head of the Garda Carlow/kilkenny/ Waterford divisional roads policing unit, told the Irish
Mirror the idea of the checkpoint was not necessarily to arrest suspects – but to ensure people were not drink or drug driving.
He said: “If every person driving down the road is breath tested, how many people are they touching when they come back home and say, ‘I have been breath tested’?
“They are telling their family, they are telling their neighbours and that is showing people that everyone and anyone can be breath tested.”
HUNDREDS of mourners paid their final respects yesterday to two of the three victims of last week’s horrific single-vehicle collision.
Tearful friends and relations gathered at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Arles, Co Laois, for the funeral of “beautiful soul” Katie Graham.
And in Kiltegan, Co Wicklow, mourners heard tragic Daryl Culbert was “a quiet spoken chap with a cheeky grin”.
Katie, who was 19, died with Daryl, who was 21, and 25-year-old Michael Kelly, from Nurney, Co Carlow.
Hundreds of mourners lined the streets and packed into the church in Arles as Katie’s white coffin was carried into the church with a framed photo of her placed on it at the altar.
Mourners heard her “life was too short but she has left behind a store of happy memories”.
Chief mourners at her funeral Mass
White coffin for Katie’s funeral in Co Laois