The parents of Kiea McCann, one of two teenagers killed in a crash on the way to a Debs ball in Monaghan in 2023, have spoken in their first television interview about arriving to the scene of the crash moments after it occurred.
Frankie and Teresa McCann recalled the incident, and said they wished the driver of the car in which Kiea was travelling had received a longer sentence.
Last week, Anthony McGinn, 61, of Drumloo, Newbliss, Co Monaghan, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and serious injury. He was driving almost twice the speed limit when his car struck a tree near Legnakelly on 31 July, 2023.
The crash killed Kiea and her best friend, 16-year-old Dlava Mohammed, and left Dlava's sister, Avin, with life-changing injuries.
Kiea’s parents told Prime Time they reached the location of the crash before emergency responders arrived.
"When we got there, we seen the car had hit the tree and had spun around," Kiea’s father, Frankie, said.
He jumped over the fence and ran down to see if the passengers were alright.
"When I went down, I got through the side window and Anthony McGinn had a hold of my daughter, and he says to me, 'Frankie, Kiea... Frankie, Kiea.’"
"Then out of nowhere, it was like an angel landed, there was a nurse and all I could see was the hands coming in like that to the back of the car. And she caught Kiea 's head, she was holding Kiea’s head when I started doing compressions on her."
Frankie said he moved from Kiea to Dlava, trying everything to revive the girls as they waited for emergency services to arrive.
"You were just trying, basically to save one to get to the other. It wasn't that you had a choice to do it, it was something you had to do. And then you'd turn around and you'd see the mother lying with your own daughter."
Eventually, it was clear there was nothing more they could do, and Frankie gave his daughter the last rites.
"You kind of hope, if there is something after life, they would know that you were with them," he said, "you know, they'd know that they were loved, because my daughter knew she was loved."
Frankie and his wife, Teresa, lay with the girls on the grass bank at the side of the road.
"I just got to say, ‘I love you baby girl,’" Teresa said.
They said they struggle to comprehend the trauma they lived through and of losing their daughter.
"You go to bed at night, you cry, you waking up crying as your reality of life," Frankie said.
"You remember the day she was born. When you're the first to hold her, then you're the last to hold her, out of the world. That's what you live with. That's the consequences of people not taking care of what they're doing," he added.
"Still to this day it's just, it's just even hard to even, you know, even think about that," Teresa said. "It's a nightmare to live with… just lying there with them and knowing that you couldn't save them."
Driver Anthony McGinn was known to Frankie and had offered to give the girls a lift to their Debs.
After the crash, it emerged that he was driving at almost twice the speed limit when the crash happened. Passengers in the car who survived the crash said in court that they had asked him to slow down.
"We just generally thought it was an accident. At that time, that's what we thought," Teresa said. "They begged for their lives. He could have slowed down at any time at that road… He chose not to."
Frankie said Kiea wanted to be a social care worker.
"She wanted to go on to college, finish it so she could help people. What is she now? She's just another road victim. She's somebody that'll never be known as Kiea."
"There's no justice for that," Frankie said.
At the sentencing, the family was shocked to hear the seven-year sentence issued to McGinn.
The judge in the case said mitigating factors included there was no drink or drugs involved and McGinn's very early plea of guilt. McGinn was also banned from driving for 15 years.
The McCann family believe McGinn should serve more time behind bars.
"You just can't live life like that and then go into a court and to hear he gets seven years," Frankie said.
"Why not turn around and give five years for my daughter, give five years for Dlava, two years for Avin? That's 12 years that a judge could have given, consecutive years."
"It's not a fair sentence. At the end of the day, he knew what he was up when he got into that car… Seven years is nothing," Teresa said.
Kiea’s younger sister, Tameaka, is now preparing for her own Debs, but the memory of her sister’s last day is very much still on her mind.
"She actually didn't want to do it," Frankie said. "But her mother talked to her into it, you know, and says, ‘it's new chapter in your life.’"
"Just looking at her sister all so excited to go out and start something" Teresa said, "and now she's going on to make hers and I really want her to make hers… but still doesn't stop her thinking of her own sister and the way it ended up with her."
Kiea’s absence isn’t just felt in relation to the big events, like her sister’s Debs, it’s felt all the time, Frankie and Teresa said.
"There is no moving on. There is no move on. Not for me anyway," Teresa said.
"[It’s] worse than a life sentence in a prison because you have nothing left," Frankie added.
An interview with Teresa and Frankie McCann is broadcast on the 20 May edition of Prime Time at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.
