A court in Limerick has heard how a family have been left shattered and broken by the death of their son and brother, killed in what has been described as a reckless act of dangerous driving in Limerick in October last year.
Sarah Drennan was giving evidence at the sentencing hearing of 21-year-old Kieran Fogarty of Hyde Road, Limerick, who was charged with dangerous driving causing the death of her younger brother Joe Drennan.
Fogarty was also charged with fleeing from the scene without offering help or assistance to the victim, knowing he was dead or seriously injured.
He was further charged with causing criminal damage to another car, failing to report the incident to gardaí and driving without insurance or a drivers licence in what the court heard was a shocking and appalling display of dangerous driving which ultimately ended up with Mr Drennan, 21, lying seriously injured under the back of Fogarty's BMW car.
Mr Drennan, from Mountrath, Co Laois, was a fourth year journalism student at UL with a bright and promising future ahead of him who had just celebrated his 21st birthday and had been appointed Editor of the Limerick Voice student newspaper.
He was standing at the bus stop on the Dublin road that night after working a shift at a local Italian restaurant, when he was struck by Fogarty's car which had been driving at 122km/h at the time.
Limerick Circuit Court was shown CCTV footage which captured Fogarty driving at speed in the Castletroy area shortly before the incident.
A garda had noticed his dangerous driving and started to follow him at some distance but lost him in the Castletroy area.
CCTV captured by the bus which Mr Drennan was waiting for, shows Fogarty emerging from the car and fleeing from the scene 14 seconds after the collision.
The BMW car had spun several times before hitting Mr Drennan, who was standing beside a wall at the bus shop shortly before 10pm that night.
Evidence of a series of text and voice messages shared by the accused man later that night and in the days which followed in which he makes reference to the collision and hitting someone, which were secured by gardaí as part of the investigation, were also shown as part of the sentencing hearing.
He also admitted wiping the car clean before he fled, and shared press footage of the incident which emerged the day after the collision.
However, he continued to insist later to gardaí that he did not know the victim had been hit and left under his car.
Fogarty had been on bail at the time of the crash for other offences, a condition of which was that he was forbidden to drive.
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Inspector Padraig Sutton, who lead the investigation, told the court that Fogarty did eventually make admissions when he was interviewed by gardaí, but only when overwhelming evidence of his involvement in the incident was presented to him with CCTV footage and DNA evidence from the car.
He said Fogarty did say sorry during those interviews, but said that apology rang hollow given what was uncovered by the investigation.
In her victim impact statement to the court, Ms Drennan said no words can describe the grief and devastation caused to her family by the loss of her brother and best friend, who died in the most violent and senseless way possible in an act which showed reckless disregard for human life.
She said her brother was enormously talented and was meant to be a star who did not deserve to die the way he did, pinned under a car, killed by a driver who chose speed and thrill over human life.
Ms Drennan said she had seen her parents Tim and Marguerite wither under the weight of their grief, as her family try and live with the horror of this life sentence.
Judge Colin Daly said there was much to consider in the case and he put back sentencing to 30 January 2025.
