Baby Road Death Is 'Youngest Victim'

The funerals of an NI-born mother and daughter - which are due to be held on Friday in Derry - will be made all the more poignant because the baby girl killed in the Co. Donegal horror road crash this week is believed to be the youngest ever victim of Ulster’s roads.

Three-month-old Neisha Meehan was killed alongside her mother Kerry-Ann (16) when the car in which they were travelling collided with a jeep towing a trailer of sheep on a stretch of road near Letterkenny on Monday night.

Kerry-Ann’s boyfriend, and the father of the young child, Christopher Hanlon (18), was last night fighting for his life in hospital in Letterkenny.

Ms Meehan was originally from the Rathmore Road in Derry but had moved with her family to Manorview in Letterkenny a year ago. Her death has left both communities on either side of the border stunned.

The Belfast Telegraph reports that Creggan Councillor Kevin Campbell said: “It is a tragedy, what more can you say about it?

“It is just devastating, devastating for the family. My thoughts and those of the community are with her family.

“Only 16-years-old and to die so suddenly like that, and with her child. This is the kind of tragedy that will reach out and touch the whole community.”

Ms Meehan was travelling in the front passenger seat — Neisha was in the back — when the car collided with the other vehicle.

Letterkenny Garda Superintendent Vincent O'Brien told the Foyle News that the emergency services came upon a "horrific scene".

He appealed for witnesses to the accident, which occurred at 8.45pm, to come forward.

"We know that a tractor travelling in the direction of Letterkenny passed the scene moments before the collision and we'd be very interested in talking to the driver.

"Three cars arrived at the scene seconds after the collision and we'd also very much like to speak to the occupants of those vehicles," he said.

The funeral of Kerryann and Niesha will leave their Letterkenny home on Friday at 8.45am to St. Mary's Church, Creggan for Requiem Mass at 10am. Interment is afterwards in the City Cemetery.

Meanwhile, Gardaí at Wicklow are today investigating a single vehicle fatal road traffic collision which occurred near Blainroe, Co. Wicklow sometime this morning.

Gardaí became aware of the collision at 7.50am when alerted by a member of the public that a car was a ditch and a 34 year-old woman was found to have been fatally injured in the collision.

She was the only occupant of the car. Her body has been taken to Loughlinstown Hospital.

The road is currently closed for technical examination and motorists are advised to avoid the area if possible.

(BMcC/KMcA)