A man who pulled the car containing the bodies of his wife and daughter from a crash site in Cork has revealed he had no idea it was his family inside.
Geraldine and Louise Clancy were on their way home from Christmas shopping on December 22, 2015, when their car was struck by another vehicle.
Their car overturned and ended up in a water-logged field, where they tragically drowned.
A man who lost his wife and daughter in a car crash just over a year ago speaks about his devastation and efforts to make the roads safer pic.twitter.com/YeYFFpgl1M
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) January 6, 2017
Husband and father Noel was called to the scene to help pull the car from the water, and he recalled the ordeal in an interview on RTÉ Six One News last night.
“As I turned back, they were pulling a girl out of the car and she was blue, purple. I didn’t recognise her,” he said.
“And as I looked back from Mike, swung back, I saw the car, and I said, ‘It’s the same colour as ours’. Dark blue. I had to close the boot and read the number plate of the car, and then I knew it was them.”
The driver of the other car, Susan Gleeson, went on to receive a three-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to dangerous driving. She was driving on an L-plate, but was legally required to have a fully-licenced driver with her at the time.
Noel went on to call for tougher laws for learner drivers, which brought about a major reform to the new Road Traffic Act.
Now, car owners who give their car to an unaccompanied learner driver will be held accountable in court.
Paying tribute to his wife Geraldine, who was just 58 when she died, Noel added: “We were a hell of a team.”
