Mum and children escape after car flips three times in Clare accident
A mother and her two young children had a lucky escape yesterday after their car smashed into a stone wall and flipped over three times.
The single-vehicle incident occurred at around 9am on the R476 Ennis to Corofin road in Co Clare.
The woman was travelling towards Corofin at the time and was overtaking a cyclist when she had to swerve to avoid an oncoming vehicle.
The Nissan Qashqai car ploughed into a stone wall, narrowly missing a pillar at the front of a house.
The car came to a stop on its side on top of a garden wall and is understood to have flipped over as many as three times.
The car was left facing the direction from which it had come.
Debris, including rocks from the wall, were left strewn across the front garden and driveway of the house.
Locals raised the alarm and ran to the car.
The woman and a child who had been sitting in the front passenger seat managed to climb out of the car while a second child was reported to have been ‘screaming’ in the back seat.
Locals helped take the second child from the rear of the car and cared for all three until the woman’s husband and emergency services arrived.
An ambulance and advanced paramedic rapid response vehicle (RRV) along with two units of the fire brigade from Ennis responded to the emergency calls.
However, before the emergency services arrived at the incident, the driver had been taken from the scene by car. Emergency workers were told she had been taken to a hospital in Limerick.
The children were assessed at the scene by paramedics but were found not to have been injured.
The children were left in the care of their father before being taken from the scene later by a relative.
The cyclist, whom the vehicle was passing at the time, was not injured but was left shaken by the incident.
He didn’t continue with his cycle but was collected and taken home by a family member instead.
Gardaí from Ennistymon are investigating the circumstances of the incident.
