Dreadful..

downtheroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119288958#Comment_119288958

The best interest of the children is to be nowhere near this woman who thinks it appropriate to drink and drive, to hit and run.

She is an awful role model, clearly doesn't think of the consequences of her actions, and is not fit to be a parent.

And this talk of an insurance payout. All the money in the world won't fix the difference she has made to this man's life.

dahat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119288913#Comment_119288913

Utterly gobsmacked reading this.

FutureGuy

I don't care if she is a mother.

She made a decision to drink and drive and it nearly killed a man.

She then made the decision to leave the man and drive away.

Throw the library at her.

growleaves

Studies show custodial sentences are ineffective at preventing crime?

Grand so

Couple of penalty points and try to keep your eyes on the road next time.

Girl Geraldine

Can we please stop with the "take her children away" crap. She is not being investigated for child abuse or neglect, so rest assured no-one will be taking the children away from her.

Children are taken into care involuntarily only in the very most extreme cases of abuse and neglect where repeated interventions from multiple agencies have failed to improve the situation. it is done for only when it can be shown that doing so is in the best interests of the child, and there is no reasonable alternative and all other appraoches have already been tried and failed.

What care orders are not used for is to punish a mother for misdeeds elsewhere in life.

Those of ye suggesting it clearly know nothing of how social care systems work so do yourselves a favour and stop suggesting stupid things like "taker her children away" because she knocked down someone while drunk driving. Ye make yourselves sound very naive and foolish with such suggestions. That wrongdoing needs to be judged on it's own circumstances, not having the children used as pawns against her.

usually the courts are fairly well balanced here , and I think this will be confirmed in due course when there will be no custodial sentence but instead something more realistic like a few years driving ban, some sort of mandatory course, and community service. We also must remember that this woman also has small children to care for. Any sentence such as community service should be at a level that does not take away from the amount of care she is able to provide to the children.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119288934#Comment_119288934

Bollocks to anyone that thinks "parents" either male or female deserve Not to be jailed for crimes they commit because they have kids.

maybe someone else argued this, but i certainly am not arguing that they 'deserve' to not go to jail. they do deserve to go to jail, but the justice system has to take into account whether this could be ruinous for the kids involved. we don't know the family situation, bar some allusions in the press

Girl Geraldine

What the girl's solicitors are probably going to do is present the defence that the children are small and in a critical stage of their development, and perhaps they will seek to sow seeds of doubt regarding family support, maybe say the father works quite long hours and is already in financial difficulty.

The more things you can add to the list for mitigation, the better.

I have the greatest of sympathy with the Garda, he has awfully bad injuries. But I do have sympathy for this young girl too. A moment's foolishness has caused her an awful lot of trouble that will follow her around for many many years to come.

I'd say her risk of re-offending in similar fashion must be near nill. Prison is no place for her and will do no good for anyone, including the Garda. It would actually be more useful to him if she was on some sort of community service that was tidying up footpaths so that he could at least get down them easier in the wheelchair during his recovery.

ratracer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289359#Comment_119289359

Jesus f***ing wept!!

I’ve often said before, if you want to kill someone in this country, drive over them, as you are almost certain to face no real consequences!

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289359#Comment_119289359

The Garda doesn't need your sympathy. He needs your respect - enough respect to stop downplaying the incident by calling it an 'accident' when you actually know nothing about how it happened.

Girl Geraldine

@AndrewJRenko , well do you have any evidence that suggests that her hitting him was an intentional act?

Unless she set out with the intent to hit him, then it was unintentional and an accident. Sure the intention to drink drive may have been there, and that is an aggravating factor but it is not the same as spotting a cyclist ahead, training the cross hairs onto him and mowing him down intentionally.

Hurrache

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289359#Comment_119289359

A moments ?!? There was a whole series of 'moments' starting from when she got in the car, hit a cyclist, drove off leaving him for dead with not so much a concern for the person.

Would ye ever stop trying to mitigate for what she done.

secman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119288878#Comment_119288878

Would you be of the same opinion if it was your husband/partner who lost a limb and left to die whilst she left the scene ?

boardlady

@Girl Geraldine, I understand the line you have taken here. Unfortunately, a lot of people view the world in black and white, where it is simply many shades of grey. The knee jerk reaction of the public is often an 'off with her head' one. I am able to see both sides of this tragedy.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119288288#Comment_119288288

You've just made that up in your head. You've no idea if she panicked, was calm, in hysterics etc. You're putting an emotive spin on something which society needs to be objective about. That's the whole point of the law.

Not all of your post is included in the quote above, not sure why it's not displaying everything....perhaps it was edited since I started typing. You had also included the lines:

At the end of the day the driving off is the lesser offence in my view. At the point of driving off, the accident had already occured and the damage was already done by then. She just panicked.

I wonder would you have the same thoughts if the man had died as a result of bleeding out from his injuries? While she sped off home to spend time with the kids and sleep off the gargle, with her victim lying bleeding in a ditch and his kids wondering where daddy is?

That girl has to live with the fact of the accident and injury she caused. Nothing positive will come from imprisoning her. Her children could end up with all sorts of separation issues if she is put in jail.

Her fault. Her choices. Her actions. Now they're her consequences to deal with. What about the man who has to live without his fcking foot for the rest of his life? Line up 1000 people in a room and ask them which they'd prefer.....to chop someone's foot off or to have your own foot chopped off. 950+ will tell you they'd go for the first option. The rest are liars.

There is a serious smack of reverse sexism about this thread. People seem to be trivialising the events based on the sex of both the perpetrator and the victim. Letting someone off with a lighter sentence because they have kids is the dictionary definition of discrimination, I'd love to see someone challenge it in the courts.

selwyn froggitt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289529#Comment_119289529

She left a man to potentially bleed to death on the side of the road whilst she fled the scene like a fúcking coward.

I can only see one side here.

mamax

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289435#Comment_119289435

Of course it wasn't intentional but she sat into her car and drove it while intoxicated that in itself is simply wrong in this day and age.

Let's strip it down to the bare facts.

A woman drove her car while intoxicated and seriously injured another road user then left the scene without any consideration for the persons welfare.

That person now has life changing injuries.

I'm sorry but for me that's all I'm seeing here and most other countries lawmakers see the same, looks like we are still a banana republic with so many thinking this person does not deserve jail time

downtheroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289359#Comment_119289359

You have sympathy for the person who drove under the influence and left the scene of a crime she committed?

Would you be so sympathetic if she maimed a member of your family?

secman

"It would actually be more useful to him if she was on some sort of community service that was tidying up footpaths so that he could at least get down them easier in the wheelchair during his recovery."

I find this part of your post Geraldine quite cold to be honest, you seem to have a lot of compassion for the woman who caused this heinous act yet seem quite flippant about the Garda with life changing injuries.

Kaisr Sose

No mater what happens, one man's, and two families futures are changed forever. The focus needs to be having less outcomes like this arrisng fron incidents on our roads.

downtheroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289576#Comment_119289576

Proof of the zero accountability in this country? Person maims a guy out for a cycle - ah but she has kids, leave her off. Person carries out an armed robbery - ah he had a tough upbringing, suspended sentence. Brown envelopes, cute hoor. Children's hospital cost, let's hold a tribunal in 10 years.

Ah sure it'll be grand.

argolis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119288913#Comment_119288913

You have absolutely no idea what happened. You say it's an almost certainty that it was a complete accident. How do you know she wasn't annoyed by him and intended to buzz him but because she's so pissed she couldn't judge it at all? Should she still be let off?

Or maybe she intended to side-swipe him because she was annoyed and so piss drunk that she couldn't use any judgement? Still okay to let her off scot free?

"she knocked down someone while drunk driving", yeah it was a bit more than that.

"I'd say her risk of re-offending in similar fashion must be near nill.". You haven't got a clue what she's capable of. If she's an alcoholic, I'd say there's a better than near-nil chance of her doing it again.

If thousands of mothers were let off serious crimes every year, in your opinion how many of the rest of us is a statistically acceptable number to die or be seriously maimed, when a guaranteed percentage of these criminals quickly re-offend?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289529#Comment_119289529

There is no "both sides".

There is the perpetrator and the victim.

Anyone having sympathy with the perpetrator needs to take a long hard look at their moral compass, because if you feel sorry for a drink driver then you're as big a scumbag as they are.

No surprise that the majority of those who do sympathise with her are also female.

If this was a thread about a rapist having a "moment of weakness" who then "panicked" and left his victim for dead, then dealing with consequences that "would follow him around for the rest of his life" and there were men on here sympathising with him, they'd be fckn banned before you could say boo.

Same should apply here, but the Maude Flanders brigade are too busy checking whether the criminal has a pair of tits or not before they pass judgement. Absolutely fckin sickening.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289615#Comment_119289615

And society, as a whole, has decided that the way to prevent these outcomes is by imposing custodial sentences. The worse the offence, the harsher the sentence. Like it or not, we discourage those who might flout the law by waving the potential outcome in their faces. She knew the rules. She chose to ignore them. There were catastrophic consequences as a result.

Giving her a shorter sentence cos she let the local GAA captain blow his load inside her is beyond ridiculous.

Thud

She was drink driving at 7.15pm on a Thursday, that's got to raise some questions about her parenting priorities if she tries to use that defense

Pawwed Rig

Strange that the Gardai are seeking dashcam footage from motorists in the vicinity at the time but generally are unable to process dash cam footage when someone is making a complaint about a close pass or other poor driving

spurious

"A moment's foolishness" can cover a multitude.

Getting pissed and driving is a moment's foolishness.

Not paying attention on the road is a moment's foolishness.

Hitting someone due to not paying attention...still just a moment's foolishness?

Leaving after hitting someone might be a moment's foolishness.

Any one on their own I might have agreed was a moment's foolishness, but all together? No way.

All together is more than likely about 20 minutes or more of foolishness and there are no excuses.

boardlady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289631#Comment_119289631

This will be treated by the courts as a driving offence - because that is the way of this country. It will not be treated as 'man-slaughter' or murder as some would like. It will come under the umbrella of driving offences, of which there is usually a 10-year cap on a driving ban. Most custodial sentences are suspended in these cases too. I am not giving you my personal opinion here, merely stating the facts of how she will be dealt with by the law.

Kaisr Sose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119289661#Comment_119289661

I am not advocating or in favour of non-custodial for this. A few months custodial will not adversely impact on anyone's kids or the right to bear more. I am tired of the what about the poor kids who will also be impacted by a custodial sentence. It is at best 50/50 she will get custodial though.

Had she hit a wall or other vehicle and died, her own family would be forever without her. In such scenario, her family would have to cope with that loss forever. She probably never considered that scenario.

It should not be about her though. She is not the victim. I hope the injured man makes a great recovery and can at some stage get back to work and if phisically and mentally possible, back cycling.

DeepBlue

What an absolutely terrible incident and what a horrible outcome for the cyclist. To think this could easily happen to any of us on any given day.

Looking at that section of road on google maps and it's straight as a die with no sharp bends and quite slight elevation changes. It's not somewhere you would expect an incident to happen.

G1032

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119288878#Comment_119288878

My jaw literally dropped open after reading this. I actually have no words