MARIA O’SHEA’S STATEMENT TO COURT

(Translated from Danish)

“FOR us it has been indescribably awful to lose three children. Add to this that I felt I had been given the sole responsibility for the crash, and that the police, via Christian Brinck, stated to the world’s media that the oncoming driver did not carry any part of the guilt. As a mother, this was unbearable. In the month that passed before the police report came out and showed that speed, as we had suspected all along, was actually part of the accident, my family felt that they were on a suicide watch. . .

Everything that the police stated to the press in the first week pointed to me as guilty — and it made no sense to me. There was talk of the oncoming driver doing 80kmh, that I had perhaps been driving on the wrong side of the road, that I hadn’t looked where I was going — ‘typical blonde tourist’, they probably all thought.

But I am an ordinary local. I strapped my children in, looked before I turned, and then our children still died. None of it made sense, and it was an incredibly difficult time for us as parents. What I had experienced did not gel with what I had been accused of.

What is most important for me today is that we remember Brian’s and my children — that this is more than just a case about traffic violations, but about children who were killed in an instant. Soren Patrick O’Shea, who was 11 years old. Soren played football and the saxophone, he was a good and honourable boy — the best big brother anyone could have wished for. Soren wanted to make animal documentaries when he grew up. Saoirse Kate O’Shea, who was nine years old. Saoirse was born deaf, but she had learnt to speak and read and write, and she could play the piano. Saoirse met life with joy and determination despite her disability, and to her no task was impossible. She wanted to own a pet shop when she grew up. Connor Mathias O’Shea, who was three years and 10 days old. Connor was Superman at home with us, and I never even knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. He was still so small and I worry so much that I can no longer be there for him — there were still so many things he needed my help with.

My mother died many years ago and I wrote her a letter with just the most basic day-today things I wanted her to do for the children, if it is as we hope, they are all together in heaven. Typed out, it was 11 pages long — and this was just the beginning of the things I wanted and wished to do for my children.

Our three children will never have their confirmation, graduation, wedding or first child — and that surely is not fair.

We had a perfectly normal summer’s morning before chaos struck us on that road.