A Sligo woman has been sentenced to three years in jail for perverting the course of justice for lying to gardaí following a road crash that killed her friend.
Rebecca McLoughlin, 25, told gardaí that her best friend had been driving the car, when in fact she had been the driver.
The car she was driving hit a wall and overturned as the two women were on their way back to Sligo from a party on a beach at Rosses Point.
It was four years after the fatal crash that McLoughlin of Sea View Park in Sligo admitted she was the driver of the car.
Melissa McManus, also of Sea View Park, died in the crash. Both women were 20 at the time of the crash in August 2004.
At Sligo Circuit Court today, McLoughlin told Melissa's family that she was truly sorry. She said she had been scared to tell the truth, saying she was young, very stupid and would never forgive herself.
McLoughlin said her boyfriend at the time said there was nothing to be gained by saying she had been driving.
However, Judge Anthony Kennedy said that McLoughlin's perversion of the course of justice meant that she successfully scuppered a prosecution against herself for dangerous driving causing the death of Melissa McManus.
Judge Kennedy said that once gardaí accepted her lie and there were no other witnesses, there was nothing further they could pursue and by the time she confessed in August 2008 it was too late for gardaí to do any further investigation.
It was a grave offence, he said, and the outrage of the McManus family was understandable.
