THE TRIAL of a motorcyclist accused of dangerous driving causing the deaths of three people was yesterday adjourned because the judge was taken ill.
Judge Raymond Fullam was an hour and 10 minutes into his address to the jury at the trial of Niall McGrath when he said: “As you can see, I am struggling.”
He adjourned the case until this morning.
Earlier Mr McGrath (25), Grahamstown, Ballintra, Co Donegal, told the jury at Donegal Circuit Court that he remembered little of the crash, at Ballynacarrick, Ballintra, on September 11th, 2005.
The prosecution claims the crash was caused by the way he drove his Suzuki motorbike.
Mr McGrath agreed he was travelling between 96 and 112km/h at the head of a convoy of four bikers returning from a rally in Co Cavan as he “filtered” past vehicles ahead of him.
However, he denied driving dangerously and said he was on his own side of the road when a car appeared in front of him travelling in the opposite direction and they collided. After that, all he remembered was lying on the road with a friend standing over him.
The jury heard that a collision between the bike, which was heading towards Donegal town on the N15, and a VW Polo car travelling in the opposite direction, driven by physiotherapist Róisín Goss (36), triggered a multi-vehicle pile-up.
Following the side-on impact, Ms Goss’s car collided with a funfair lorry that she was overtaking and Mr McGrath’s motorcycle collided with another car in which carpenter Damien Quigg and his wife Teresa were travelling.
It in turn veered across the road and into the path of an oncoming car driven by Noreen Carr in which her mother, Nora McGee (74), was a front-seat passenger.
Mr and Ms Quigg, both 49, Dungiven, Co Derry, and Ms McGee, Gortahork, Co Donegal, were all pronounced dead at the scene. Patricia McLaughlin, prosecuting, said the drivers of the vehicles carrying the people who died were “entirely” blameless.
The trial was told the crashes happened on a straight dry road on a sunny evening.
Peter Finlay, defending, said it all happened in the blink of an eye and the jury were being asked to “freeze-frame” it. Mr McGrath denies dangerous driving causing the three deaths and a charge of reckless endangerment.