Family of crash man given shin bone in leg of his jeans

THE heartbroken family of a man who died in a horrific crash have told of their shock and anger after finding his shin bone still in his jeans after his belongings were returned by the gardaí.

Kevin McClintock from Derry was one of two people killed in the accident in Co Donegal.

In October, an inquest into the death of the 32-year-old found that he was four and a half times over the drink-driving limit when his car struck a vehicle being driven by Orla O’Reilly.

The crash occurred at Newtowncunningham on November

13, 2015. Both Mr McClintock and Ms O’Reilly, a 28-yearold youth worker, were killed instantly.

Another man, John McBride, a passenger in Mr McClintock’s car, was injured. He recovered but died suddenly earlier this year.

Mr McClintock’s family have long disputed that he was driving the car at the time of the crash and say that there is no forensic, witness or DNA evidence to say he was.

This week they had his belongings returned to them and were shocked to find his shin bone still in the leg of the trousers he was wearing when he died.

His father Tony said that they were horrified and are planning to open Kevin’s grave and place the bone in his coffin.

“After years of wrangling with gardaí and being told that my son’s belongings had been handed over to an undertaker at the Border, which was nonsense, we finally got his stuff back last week,” he said.

“We were told not to open the bag at the morgue but to bring it home. We sat around the kitchen table and opened it. It had things like his watch, his wallet and the clothes he was wearing.

“When we took out the jeans he was wearing when he died, there was a hard object in the leg.

“We thought it was a stick or something at first, but when we took it out it was clearly a large piece of bone.

“Horrified and upset doesn’t even cover it. We are totally devastated.”

Kevin’s sister Roisin Doherty

(34) says the fact that her brother’s bone was given back to them in a plastic bag was heartbreaking.

“It was so upsetting to find my brother’s bone in amongst his belongings,” she said.

A Garda spokesperson said: “An Garda Síochána are in contact with this family and dealing with all matters in relation to this investigation.”