Teen driver killed after Garda chase
A BOY of 17 was killed driving at 124kph in the wrong direction to avoid gardai after having been involved in a high-speed chase.
Gerard Prentice died when his Peugeot 307 collided head on with a van on southbound section of the N7 near Clondalkin, West Dublin, in January 2020.
Dublin District Coroner’s Court heard the father-of-one, who was breaking a curfew, eluded pursuing gardai before he performed a U-turn on a slip road of the N7 at Kingswood after noticing a patrol car was exiting the same junction.
The high-speed chase began after he had failed to stop when signalled by a patrol car in Tallaght.
A postmortem revealed the deceased had almost five times the legal level of alcohol in his blood as well as traces of cocaine.
A jury of six men and three women returned a verdict of death by misadventure.
The inquest heard a probe of the fatal incident by the Garda Ombudsman made no findings against officers or other parties.
Several Garda witnesses gave evidence that the vehicle being driven by Prentice first came to the attention of a Garda patrol car at around 12.20am in the Cookstown area of Tallaght.
Gda Lisa Prendergast, who was driving the patrol car, said the other vehicle was being driven in a “quick and erratic” manner in Tallaght.
She told the hearing how Prentice’s vehicle was pursued through the Cookstown Industrial Estate towards Newland’s Cross during which it was travelling at excessive speed, drove the wrong way around roundabouts and broke a series of red lights.
The inquest heard the driver of the van, Aslan Opiev, suffered two broken legs and several fractured vertebrae and was out of work for a long period.
Mr Opiev said: “My life changed completely.”
His young son and another male who were in the van, suffered soft-tissue injuries.