Man (24) who died in crash was disqualified driver

A man who died when the car he was driving hit a lamppost in south Dublin early on Tuesday was a disqualified driver who is said to have sped off when gardaí tried to get him to pull his vehicle over.

A woman who was travelling as a passenger in the car was also fatally injured in the crash on Butterfield Avenue in Rathfarnham at 1.30am on Tuesday. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.

The man, Dean Coleman (24), was known to gardaí. He had in December 2013 crashed a car while being pursued by members of the force. At that time he attempted to flee on foot and left his one-year-old child in the vehicle.

He said at the time that he fled because he knew there were outstanding warrants for him and he wanted to spend Christmas with his child and partner.

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The Irish Times understands that in the early hours of Tuesday gardaí in south Dublin were alerted to look out for Coleman driving a 2005 Fiat Stilo.

A number of officers travelling in a Garda car noticed Coleman and the woman in the Fiat at traffic lights near Rathfarnham Shopping Centre. Gardaí gestured to him to pull over but Coleman was said to have accelerated away through the lights.

Another Garda vehicle was in the general area and its occupants also saw the Fiat around the same time, before losing sight of it. A short time later gardaí came across the badly damaged Fiat crashed into a lamppost near the Old Bridge Road junction.

The vehicle appeared to have left the road at speed and hit the lamppost sideways on the passenger side of the car. The vehicle partially broke up on impact and parts of it landed in the gardens of nearby houses.

Gsoc investigation

Gardaí in Tallaght station are investigating the crash and the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) has also started its own investigation.

Gsoc is legally obliged to begin inquiries into any incident that results in a member of the public being injured or killed at or around the time they were in contact with Garda members.

The bodies of Coleman and the deceased woman were taken from the scene to Tallaght University Hospital where postmortems were to be carried out.

A Garda spokesman appealed to anyone who travelled on the road at the time of the crash, particularly if they have dashcam footage, to contact Tallaght Garda station.

In the previous incident, Coleman was jailed for four years after a court heard he had led gardaí on a car chase after failing to stop at a routine traffic checkpoint. He broke red lights, mounted a footpath, sped through a Dublin residential area and went over, or the wrong way around, roundabouts.

After abandoning the car, which his son was strapped into, Coleman was founding hiding behind a nearby bin and later tested positive for cannabis.

His sentencing hearing at the time was told he had 27 previous convictions including five for dangerous driving. He was on bail at the time for making threats to kill or seriously harm and had previously been banned from driving for eight years by a court in Co Kildare, where his family had relocated from Dublin when he began to get into trouble with gardaí.