Wrong-way crash survivor ‘cannot believe it has happened again’

By Cillian Sherlock, Press Association

The horror head-on collision on the M9 has “brought it all back” for a woman seriously injured in a similar wrong-way motorway crash three years ago.

Five teenagers died on Sunday when the car they were travelling in was driven the wrong way down the M9 in Co Kildare and hit another vehicle.

Funerals were held for Joe Carthy, Alex McCarthy and Kamil Pustkowski on Friday while services for Jeremy O’Brien and Jack Kennedy will be held on Monday and Tuesday.

A child and three women from the same family, who were in the other car, are being treated for serious injuries in hospital.

A vigil in support of the family, who were on the way to Dublin Airport for a holiday, took place on Friday evening.

Ella Hendricken and Niamh and Alma Kinsella were travelling with the child to the airport for a holiday when the car they were in was struck by the other vehicle.

The crash has renewed focus on enforcement of dangerous driving, the regulation of social media content and the provision of State care to children.

A woman whose life was changed by a strikingly similar collision three years ago has said she “absolutely cannot believe that it has happened again”.

Róisín Stakelum said on Saturday: “I’m so upset. It’s really, really affected me. I can’t stop thinking about the girls and the little boy in the car that was crashed into, and what they must be going through, and it’s brought it all back for me.

“I haven’t been able to sleep properly since I heard about this, to be honest, and I just can’t believe it’s happened again, and that I don’t feel like there was anything really done to try to prevent something like this from happening again.”

Stakelum was also driving to the airport on July 1, 2023 for a holiday before a planned emigration to Australia.

Shortly before 1am on the M8 motorway, she was struck by a car driven by teenagers the wrong way down the motorway and said she “had no time to react”.

Recalling the crash, she said: “I was probably drifting in and out of consciousness, but I remember the headlights, I remember the big bang, and I remember being in the car, absolutely terrified afterwards.

“I had had a fairly significant head injury, so everything – like nothing, made sense. I could not comprehend what had happened.

“I didn’t know where I was. I had forgotten where I was going. It was just absolutely terrifying.”

Stakelum told RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor radio programme that a “psychological toll” involving fear in the world kicked in when she was leaving the safety of the hospital.

“That fear has lived in me since – it hasn’t really gone away. It has improved somewhat, but I am still absolutely terrified of everything.”

Stakelum has since been able to return to work two days per week but said “it’s a struggle”, adding: “I still have a lot of physical consequences and psychological consequences that affect my ability to work, and it has affected my trajectory in work.”

Asked if she thought she would ever go back to her old life, she said: “No, I don’t. I think my life is always going to be different.

“I’m always going to live with the scars, physical and psychological, from what happened to me that night. I’ll never be the same again.”

She said she is a completely different person following the crash as she urged everyone to be more careful on the roads, “especially the small cohort of young people” that are are driving dangerously on motorways, adding: “It has to stop – it’s absolutely ridiculous.

“People that survive crashes like that, they don’t necessarily get their own lives back.”

She said she was “angry” that “nothing has been put in place to stop this from happening” again, adding that other European countries have alert systems for wrong-way drivers on motorways.

Asked how she feels about the driver who crashed into her, Stakelum said: “Mixed emotions. I have a lot of empathy for him. I have an awful lot of anger as well.”

She said he did not have an easy life but added it was “not an excuse”.

Further asked to reflect on the boys involved on Sunday’s crash, she told the programme: “I don’t know, that’s a harder one to answer.

“I do have empathy for them and I have a lot of empathy for their families and what they’ve been going through.”

On the family injured in the crash, she added: “I don’t know what they have ahead of them and trauma can affect people in so many different ways.

“I don’t know what kind of injuries they have.

“All I could say is that it’s going to be … a slow process to get back to normal – and if there’s anything that I can do to help them, I would really like to be able to do that if they were willing to accept my help.”

A fundraiser for the family injured in the M9 crash had raised more than €700,000 by noon on Saturday.