A man who had heroin and Valium in his system when the stolen car he was driving on the wrong side of the road collided with another car, causing the death of a mother of two, must serve an extra year in jail, the Court of Criminal Appeal ruled yesterday.
The court increased from three to four years the jail sentence imposed on Darragh Gunning.
Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, in the court's decision upholding the argument of the Director of Public Prosecutions that the original sentence was unduly lenient, said the sentencing judge had given insufficient weight to the multiple aggravating factors of the case and to the deterrent aspect of such sentences.
Gunning (37), Larchfield, Dunboyne, Co Meath, had received the original four-year sentence, with the last year suspended, for dangerous driving causing death and other offences on April 2nd, 2005. He was also disqualified from driving for 10 years.
The offences occurred when he was staying with his parents at a caravan park at Courtown, Co Wexford, as part of an effort to get himself off heroin.
By pretending his father was having a heart attack and that he was locked out of the family caravan, Gunning had stolen a car belonging to another man staying in the caravan park and had driven it in a reckless fashion trying to exit the park, narrowly missing colliding with two other people.
He left the park and drove at speed towards Courtown and on to Gorey. It was alleged he failed to stop for an unmarked Garda patrol car and drove around another Garda car which sought to block the road.
He then drove through Gorey town and out onto the main N11 road heading towards Arklow and Dublin.
Some minutes later, a Garda sergeant came upon the scene of a serious accident on the main N11 at Aske, Gorey, which the sergeant described as "a scene of total carnage".
The sentencing court heard the evidence indicated that the car driven by Gunning crossed over to the wrong side of the road and collided head on with a car in which Shin Yung Sheehan, a South Korean national and married mother of two living in Dunmore East, was a front-seat passenger.
She was being driven home by a Korean friend from Dublin airport following a trip to see her parents, sister and two brothers in South Korea.
Her friend was seriously injured in the accident.
The offences also occurred during the suspension of a three-year sentence imposed on Gunning in January 2002 for having controlled drugs for unlawful sale or supply.
Gunning had pleaded guilty from the outset and the DPP accepted that he appeared genuinely remorseful.
It was also stated in reports that he was in Co Wexford with his parents, who are elderly, in an effort to detoxify himself from heroin and was taking Valium as part of the detoxification process.
The DPP argued that, notwithstanding the mitigating factors, the sentence imposed for the offence of dangerous driving causing death did not reflect the seriousness of the charge and the multiple aggravating factors involved.
