A man was killed just hours before his wedding when a telephone pole smashed through the front windscreen of a car and into his head, a court heard on Monday evening.
Groom-to-be Myles “Miley” Harty (20), from Askeaton, Co Limerick, was fatally injured while travelling as a front-seat passenger in a Skoda Octavia that was driven by his best man and cousin, Shane Harty (21), of Tola Park, Shannon, Co Clare.
The car left the Askeaton to Rathkeale road and struck a wall and a ditch and a pole, between midnight and 1am on August 21st, 2021.
The car became airborne after striking the wall and went into a roll as it collided with the ditch before impacting with the telephone pole, Limerick Circuit Criminal Court heard.
Myles Harty, whose son “Miley” was born a few months after he died, suffered catastrophic head injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The harrowing evidence of the fatal collision, as well as emotional victim impact statements written by the deceased’s parents and fiancé, Kate Quilligan, were shared at Shane Harty’s sentencing hearing on Monday.
Prosecuting barrister, Lilly Buckley, said the force of the inverted car crashing into the telephone pole was such that the pole “broke at its base and travelled through the car and impacted on the head of Myles Harty, which obviously led to significant head injuries”.
Shane Harty was initially charged with one count of dangerous driving causing Mr Harty’s death. However, a week prior to his trial, the State accepted a guilty plea offered by the defendant to one count of a lesser offence of careless driving causing Mr Harty’s death, which carries a sentence of a maximum of two years in jail and or a €10,000 fine.
The collision occurred as Shane Harty and Myles Harty and another cousin, Daniel Harty, were travelling in Shane Harty’s car to a local shop after the three close relatives had been shopping in Limerick City earlier as part of their final preparations for Myles Harty’s wedding to Ms Quilligan.
It was a road the three men had regularly travelled at night, Ms Buckley said.
Following the collision, Shane Harty admitted to gardaí he had been speeding and “showing off” as he drove the three men shortly before the crash.
When gardaí put it to Shane Harty that “there is no doubt that at the time you lost control of the car you were speeding”, he agreed and replied, “no doubt”.
Shane Harty told gardaí he regretted “everything” and he would have driven “a lot slower” if he had the opportunity to go back in time to the morning in question, “I’m sorry it happened, it shouldn’t have happened,” he told gardaí.
Ms Buckley said a Garda forensic collision investigator who examined the scene had not been able to determine the exact pre-collision speed of the car, but he was of the view that the circumstances involved “strongly suggested that [the car] was travelling above the speed limit of 80km/h”.
No other vehicle was involved, the road conditions were good and the car was in good working order, it was heard.
The car eventually came to a stop “lying on its roof”, a distance of 22.9 metres from where it left the road.
A postmortem report stated Myles Harty suffered “non-survivable” head injuries after sustaining “multiple complex facial and skulls fractures” when the telephone poll smashed into his head.
Ms Buckley fought back tears while reading out emotional victim impact statements written by Ms Quilligan, and Margaret and Myles Harty Snr, the deceased’s parents, who were present in the court.
Kate Quilligan and members of her late fiancé’s family wept in court as her impact statement was read by Ms Buckley.
“Every morning I wake up I relive the nightmare of that day. It will never leave my mind.” “It should have been the happiest day of my life...it has shattered so many lives and robbed our son, Miley, of his father.”
Margaret and Myles Harty snr wrote that “things will never be the same” after their son’s sudden death.
“Myles was preparing for his wedding day, but he never got the chance to celebrate his special day,” they said.
“Myles always had a big beautiful smile on his face, he is a big loss for us all...He went out that night and told us, ‘I’ll be back in five minutes’, but he never returned.”
In letters penned to the deceased’s loved ones, Shane Harty offered his sincere apologies and sympathies and he said he had lost his “best friend” in the collision.
“I wish I could turn back time,” added the defendant.
Shane Harty’s barrister, senior counsel Brian McInerney, asked the sentencing judge, Colin Daly, to consider a number of mitigating factors in his judgement.
Mr McInerney said Shane Harty was genuinely remorseful, had no previous convictions, had a clean driver’s licence; had cooperated with gardaí; and he had no traces of alcohol or drugs in his system at the time of the collision.
“Whatever sentence is imposed by the court, he (Shane Harty) has a heavy burden, he is already serving a life sentence of that burden every waking moment of his life,” Mr McInerney said.
Judge Daly said he needed more time to consider his sentence, and he remanded Shane Harty on continuing bail to appear before Limerick Circuit Court for final judgement on Monday, November 25th.
