A senior Garda officer has described the scene of a crash in the Republic of Ireland on Saturday that killed five young people as “difficult” for those who attended.
Supt Charlie Armstrong said gardaí who attended then had to inform the parents and other family members their loved ones had been killed.
Supt Armstrong, who is based in Dundalk, said some of the gardaí were just three months into their policing careers.
He said the families and friends of all five victims would, in time, seek answers to how the crash happened and why they had died and the Garda investigators working on the investigation would work hard to provide those answers.
While everyone on the Garda was warned from the time hey were training at the Garda College in Templemore, Co Tipperary, that they may be called upon to attend very difficult scenes, they all hoped it would never happen, he said.
The five were killed instantly on Saturday night in a head-on collision near Dundalk, with first responders arriving to what was described as a scene of “utter devastation”.
The friends were named as Chloe McGee (23) and Shay Duffy (21) from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan; Alan McCluskey (23) from Drumconrath, Co Meath; Dylan Commins (23) from Ardee, Co Louth, and Chloe Hipson (21) from Bellshill in Lanarkshire, Scotland, who was living in Carrickmacross.
The Volkswagen Golf they were travelling to Dundalk in was in a collision with another vehicle just after 9pm in the townland of Gibstown.
A sixth person, a young man, survived and is being treated in hospital for serious injuries.
The occupants of the second vehicle, a man and a woman, are also receiving hospital treatment.
Supt Armstrong said the Garda team that responded to the scene immediately had to focus on informing the families their loved ones had died, as well as practical tasks such as preserving the scene for examination.
Supt Armstrong said the emergency services personnel who attended the scene – including firefighters based at Dundalk, HSE ambulance crews and his own Garda personnel – encountered “a difficult scene”.
Conditions had been “wet and windy” around the time of the crash, which took place outside Ardee at about 9pm.
A senior officer has been appointed to lead the investigation at Dundalk Garda station into the cause of the tragedy. Postmortem examinations will be carried out on the five victims over the coming days.
The vehicles involved in the crash will be examined, though the vehicle the five deceased were in was badly damaged by fire, which broke out after the crash.
Top of page: The five crash victims. From left: Chloe McGee (23), Shay Duffy (21), Dylan Commins (23), Alan McCluskey (23) and Chloe Hipson (21).