‘UP INTO AIR’

WORKERS with Sligo County Council suffered significant injuries including a broken neck, back and head injuries in an accident in which their colleague was fatally injured.

Evidence was heard from the men in the trial of Vlastimil Zachar, with an address at Connell Drive, Newbridge, Co Kildare. The Czech national pleaded not guilty to dangerous driving causing death.

Padraig Noone, a general operative with the local authority was killed on 13, August 2015, when the Scania lorry Zachar was driving, veered into the hard shoulder at Ballhealy townland, Hollybrook, Castlebaldwin.

Giving evidence, Thomas Collery (right), a fellow general operative recalled he was behind two tractors which were hedge cutting, along with Mr Damien Davey and the late Mr Noone who were all litter picking with him, when he heard a loud bang.

‘I heard a loud bang and Damien [Davey] shouted, ‘Oh God’. I saw a big cab of a truck coming and saw a JCB. The lorry had come into the hard shoulder’.

Mr Collery said he was ‘fired’ 5 to 6 feet on the hard shoulder and was knocked out.

When he regained consciousness the number plate of the lorry was two feet from him.

He said he remembers seeing the JCB being rolled at a 45 degree angle into the bank of the hard shoulder and Mr Noone was in its path.

The Council employee said he saw Mr Noone to his right under the bucket of the JCB and when he went to check on him he knew he had passed away.

He then went to check his colleague, Damien Davey, who was lying on the ground ‘moaning’.

He noticed that Andrew Fehily the JCB driver was thrown from his machine and that the cab of the lorry was in the hard shoulder with its trailer on the road. Collery then directed traffic momentarily, but his arm was ‘ hanging down’ and he was covered in blood.

After gardaí and emergency services arrived, Collery’s injuries were assessed and he had glass in his head and elbow but did not go to hospital. Damien Davey told the court that on the day he knew something wasn’t right when he heard ‘a loud bang’ and he started to run. “I remember getting hit with the front bucket of the JCB. I could see Padraig under it.

“I was put up into the air and fell on the ground. The lorry was still coming pushing the JCB.” Mr Davey said he called to Mr Noone numerous times and tried to pull himself over to him. He was taken to Sligo General Hospital. He suffered multiple breaks to his left leg, a punctured lung and fractured ribs. Mr Davey was in a wheelchair for eight months following the accident, is unable to return to work due to his injuries and cannot stand for longer than ten minutes at a time.

He still has a limp and according to medical evidence read into the court he was lucky not to have lost his leg. Gerard Glynn, the driver of a Mitsubishi crew cab which was impacted by the lorry first, told the court that his vehicle and the JCB were stationary at the time of the accident.

Mr Glynn said he did not hear the sound of brakes but remembers feeling that his pick-up was being spun around anti-clockwise.