A 44-year-old woman has died and two children were rescued after her car entered the River Lee in Cork city on Friday night.
Gardai are hoping to speak to the children to try and find out the sequence of events that led to the car ending up in the river.
Specialist Garda interviewers, trained to speak with children involved in traumatic events, hope to speak to the boys, aged 12 and 10, over the weekend if they are up to talking about the tragedy.
“We are hoping to speak to the two boys whenever they are up to talking to us to try and find out how the car ended up in the river because even though people saw it go into the river, we are still not sure how exactly it happened – it’s a terrible tragedy for the family,” said one Garda source. Gardai are treating the incident as a tragic accident.
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The incident happened just before 9pm when the woman’s car went into the river on Kennedy Quay on the southside of the Lee, downstream from the confluence of the north and south channels of the river and below the Idle Hour pub, near the former Odlum’s Building.
It is understood that the children were in the car with her when the car ended up in the water, but it appears they managed to get out of the vehicle, and they were rescued from the river by witnesses who entered the water and pulled them to safety on the quayside.
Meanwhile other members of the public had raised the alarm and gardaí and Cork City Fire Brigade units from nearby Anglesea Street arrived on the scene just as the two boys were being brought out of the water and they were quickly taken to Cork University Hospital for treatment.
“The two boys were obviously in an awful state of shock, but they were lucky that people had seen the car go in and got them out of the water quickly, so they weren’t in the water long enough for hypothermia to set in as water temperatures are still very cold,” said one source.
The boys were medically examined by doctors at Cork University Hospital and treated for shock before they were discharged into the care of a family member, and they were last night being comforted by relatives at their family home.
Meanwhile a major rescue operation was launched, coordinated by the Irish Coast Guard Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Valentia and the Irish Coastguard Sikorksi helicopter, Rescue 117 was dispatched from Waterford to assist in the operation.
Fire service personnel were joined by Naval Service divers from Haulbowline who began a search of the area where the car was seen entering the river, which was at high tide at the time, resulting in the car plunging into over 12 metres of water, which made search visibility quite poor.
The search continued after darkness fell with the aid of lighting and at around 12.30am, divers recovered the body of the woman from the submerged car and her remains were taken to Cork University Hospital where a postmortem is expected to take place over the weekend.
The car was lifted from the river by a crane, and it is expected that it will be examined by a garda PSV inspector to see whether it was in a roadworthy condition prior to it entering the river or if it was mechanically defective in any way which may have contributed to the tragedy.
Gardaí have appealed to all those who witnessed the incident to contact them at Anglesea Street Garda station on 021-452200 while they have also begun harvesting CCTV footage from the general docks area in the hope it may clarify what exactly happened.
Gardaí were also checking CCTV footage from elsewhere around Cork city in the hope of tracing the car’s movements in the time leading up to the tragedy and they were trying to confirm reports the woman had earlier taken the children for a meal at a local McDonald’s.
Gardaí were not releasing the name of the dead woman until all next of kin had been notified but it is understood that she was from the greater Douglas/Rochestown area on the southside of Cork city where she lived with her husband and children.
A Garda spokesman said investigators will prepare a file, incorporating both the postmortem results and the PSV Inspector’s report as well as statements from witnesses and family members of the dead woman for an inquest at Cork City Coroner’s Court which is likely to be held later in the year.
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