Wayne O’Connor
Estlin Wall died days before her fourth birthday. Her family feel a sense of injustice, writes Wayne O’Connor
A sense of injustice, and a new baby...
IT is obvious a little girl lives at the Wall family home in Ennistymon, Co Clare. A pink bicycle rests on its side in the garden and a bedroom is filled with ornate butterflies, little dresses and stuffed bears.
But the girl living here, Lucie, is just a few weeks old and none of these things are hers. They belong to her big sister, Estlin, who was killed three years ago, just days before her fourth birthday.
Estlin’s neck was broken in a crash on March 15, 2017, as her father, Vinnie, drove her to creche. He took evasive action to avoid a truck but collided with another vehicle.
The truck driver, Senan O’Flaherty (63), of Lower Gowerhass, Cooraclare, Co Clare, was given a four-year driving ban and fined a total of €1,500 at Ennis Circuit Court last month for careless driving causing Estlin’s death and serious bodily harm to her father. Vinnie was left with a brain injury that prevents him from working or driving.
The toddler survived on life support for four days after the collision. Estlin’s mother, Amy Dutil-Wall, said goodbye to their daughter while Vinnie was in a coma.
“I felt her heart beat for the last time,” she said. “I handed her dead body over to the doctors and walked out of there so they could take her organs.”
The family continues to mourn Estlin but the recent court case reopened old wounds and sent memories of the crash fizzing fresh in their minds again.
The morning of the crash was like any other. Vinnie and Estlin were less than 10km from home when he was forced to avoid a truck that moved to pull out from behind a bus.
The family GP happened upon the scene of the crash and worked with others to keep Estlin alive. Paramedics gave her a shot of adrenaline and she was rushed to hospital.
Amy only remembers part of the prognosis delivered by a doctor.
“They described Estlin’s injuries, and I don’t really remember anything before or after he said ‘Estlin will die’.”
The little girl was kept on a life-support machine in Temple Street Children’s Hospital while preparations were made to have her organs donated. Meanwhile, Vinnie was in an induced coma. Doctors had no idea how significant his brain injury was and what condition he would be in once he woke up. He was still in that coma when Estlin’s funeral was held and was only fit enough to hear the news of her death five weeks after being revived.
“The doctors said he was absolutely not in a place cognitively where he could understand that there was a crash and that Estlin died,” said Amy. “Then he started to question it himself. Why was he in hospital? What had happened? Then he kind of started to hint at this idea of ‘oh, perhaps there was a car crash’ and would Estlin have been with him?
“That’s when we knew it was probably time to tell him.
“I feel that day was probably worse than her funeral. I was sick to my stomach.
“I can’t imagine anything worse than sitting him down and telling him: ‘You’ve been in a crash and Estlin is dead. You’re never going to see her again’.”
Vinnie spent three months in hospital.
“When I was told Estlin had died, I understood what the words meant but in the condition I was in I didn’t really react,” he said. “I was in a daze for a long time. I could understand facts but processing them into a personal meaning wasn’t really happening.”
Because he missed the funeral, a family friend helped record it so Vinnie could be made fully aware of what happened and how Estlin was remembered by those close to the family. But the first time he watched the video there was no outpouring, no emotional response, no expression of grief. He was not yet in a place where he could react.
He has a sense of regret about missing the funeral, “but it’s not the first thing I would regret”, he admits.
“The first thing that I would regret is just that I even got in the car that morning.”
It’s not that Vinnie blames himself. He just wants his daughter to be sitting in their garden playing with the couple’s other two children.
Vinnie’s brain injury has everyday implications. When Lucie was born two weeks ago, Vinnie could not drive Amy to hospital. Covid-19 restrictions meant he could not stay in the maternity ward after the birth so at 3am, with no taxis in operation, he had to ask a friend for help.
“I can’t drive with my condition,” he said, “so I had to ask a friend in Limerick if he was willing to break his cocoon to give me a place to stay for the night.”
Thankfully, the friend was more than happy to oblige.
“While I don’t have any kind of physical injuries, I do have lots of sensory injuries where my brain is telling me that there’s an issue.
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes but they go into a sort of deep blur sometimes. I have this ringing in my ears. It grows when I’m in a public space. If I’m in a cafe, there’s noise from the coffee machine and all that [ambient sound], it just becomes deafening.”
Mental fatigue is also an issue, so to stay on top of this he tries to keep a routine.
His brain injury meant Vinnie went to considerable effort to prepare for the recent court case.
“I have appointments to go for check-ups and I’m always very tense and anxious when I see the date coming closer on the calendar, and for a few days before it I would be kind of restless. I have to get in the right gear and hype myself up, prepare myself mentally,” he said.
“When I go in to court I really have to concentrate, otherwise I am going to miss the meaning of what is being said. I have to be focused but I ended up coming out going, ‘I braced myself for that?’”
The family feels a great sense of injustice at the sentence handed out for causing Estlin’s death.
Judge Gerald Keys said O’Flaherty had “a low culpability” and recognised the truck driver would be unable to earn a living while banned from driving.
The judge also recognised O’Flaherty’s legal representatives had told the court he felt remorse for his role in the crash.
Amy reacted angrily in court when a four-year driving ban and fine was handed out. The family is still irate.
“A child is dead,” she said. “No justice can be done that is going to make us feel any better but that just felt like such an offensive injustice. That is what made it so difficult leaving the court that day. Over three years of pain and suffering for us, which is just the beginning of the rest of our lives, but in the courts — to have it end like that was just so disheartening. It really was like the wound was being opened again. It feels like you are being victimised in more ways.”
Vinnie nods in agreement. “That phrase, ‘low culpability’, was playing on my mind for days afterwards,” he said.
“The lorry driver had done a very dangerous manoeuvre on a very dangerous place on the road. As a reflex reaction I swerved into a ditch to avoid it. What happened after that was out of my control, we collided with the vehicle that was behind the truck. But if things had happened differently and I had not swerved, would he still be at the low end of culpability despite doing the exact same manoeuvre?”
The Walls’ lives changed again when Amy gave birth to Lucie on May 13. A week later, the Director of Public Prosecutions confirmed it was appealing O’Flaherty’s sentence, claiming it is “unduly lenient”.
‘I felt her heart beat for the last time’
‘It feels like you are being victimised in more ways’
Estlin had less than four years to make an impact on this world, and did so. Her little brother Mannix is now at the same age Estlin was before she died. They share striking visual similarities and strong personalities. Mannix welcomed the Sunday Independent to his home last week eager to play with new visitors. While out on family walks he greets people by introducing them to Vinnie. “Have you met my friend, daddy?” he asks with an outstretched arm.
Estlin and Lucie will never meet but the older sibling has already played a significant role in the new baby’s life, Amy explains.
“Before Mannix was born, Estlin was always going on about the baby being a little sister. Then this name Lucie started to get floated around.
“I’d really hoped it was a girl just for her sake and then out came Mannix. She went to meet him in hospital and there was never any mention of this little sister again. She just completely doted on Mannix from day one.
“We remembered how she used to say, ‘my little sister, Lucie’ and I can’t actually think of any other names that would be more appropriate now.”