A LIMERICK businessman who veered his car to the other side of the road, crashing into an oncoming vehicle and killing its 52 year-old driver, was jailed for three years.
Jason Gormley, aged 39, with an address in Castleconnell, was sentenced for dangerous driving, causing death to retired schoolteacher, Aidan Lawless, in October 2009.
Pleading guilty to the charge, the court was told that Gormley had been socialising in Boher, county Limerick, earlier that evening and consumed eight pints of Guinness, and then drove his vehicle in the direction of his Castleconnell home. However, on a straight stretch of road at Ahabeg, Ballysimon, he veered to the other side and hit the victim’s Ford Mondeo head-on, leaving the schoolteacher to die and his injured wife trapped in the car. A witness said that Gormley, originally from Ennis, was helped from his vehicle and walked over to the Mondeo, before he turned and left again.
The fatally injured man, and his wife, had travelled from Clonmel to bring their daughter to LIT, where she was studying.
Shortly after 8.15pm on October 4, 2009, the couple were making the return journey home when the collision happened on the stretch of road outside Limerick.
The court heard witness evidence that Gormely “seemed drunk” as he walked away from the scene.
Gormley then stopped another driver and paid him €50 to drive him to his Castleconnell home.
Having fled the area, Gormley, bare chested and without any shoes or socks, was arrested the following morning in the Ardnacrusha area by gardai.
Judge Carroll Moran sentenced him to three years in prison on the charge of dangerous driving causing death, and banned him from driving for a period of 20 years, saying it was “completely unacceptable to drink and drive”.
