Mum tells of heartbreak at son's death in new doc about tragedies on our roads
A distraught mother of a passenger who died in a crash where the driver of the car he was in was highly intoxicated, has pleaded with others to be aware of the devastating consequences of driving under the influence.
Three young men died instantly when their speeding car collided with a people carrier in Co Waterford.
The driver of the Volkswagen Golf car, Eamon Dixon (22), was found to be four and a half times over the alcohol limit, and had a number of drugs in his system, including traces of cocaine.
His two passengers, Michael 'Mikey' Tobin (38) and Kenneth O'Sullivan (39), were also found at their post mortem to have consumed large quantities of alcohol.
Evan Tobin lost his brother Mikey
A people carrier carrying a couple – Gary Fenton and Mary Bermingham, as well as Mary's four young children – was pulverised by the impact of the car which collided with them on the wrong side of the road.
Injuries
Gary, Mary and Mary's oldest daughter had to be airlifted to hospital in three separate helicopters and suffer lifelong injuries to this day.
In a new RTÉ documentary Impact: Anatomy of a Car Crash, Michael Tobin's mother Anne told of the devastating impact of the crash which took her son who was a passenger in the car driven by Eamon Dixon.
'If they want to do drugs, if they want to drink, stay in someone's house. Leave the cars behind. Don't get out on that road and put other people life in danger,' she said.
But much to Anne's shock, father-of-three Michael had small traces of cocaine in his system too.
'We were told yes there was a tiny bit of cocaine in his system that morning,' confirms Anne. 'Never in my wildest dream that somebody would come to me and say, 'Anne, Michael, yes here is a little bit of cocaine'. I would be saying to them, 'nah, not him, definitely not'.
'It was devastating to be quite honest. You certainly wouldn't wish it on anybody. You're told things that you don't want to hear. I suppose all parents think their children are angels.'
Just over 1,450 people have died on Irish roads since that horrific car crash near Dungarvan in Co Waterford on December 4 2016.
Gary Fenton and Mary and Chloe Bermingham
But alarmingly the programme highlights that the majority of crashes are caused by young men driving under the influence of some sort of substance.
Eamon and Michael hailed from Dungarvan, while Kenneth, who was the owner of the car, lived in Blackpool in Cork.
Anne recalls that Michael would have known Eamon as he was a neighbour.
'Mikey, he had the tree up, he had the balloons up. He was hands on for Christmas, he loved it. But Christmas was for the children, and that's the way he operated, loved Christmas,' she said.
'Mikey hadn't worked for a while because he was full-time dad. Mikey was the first child in the family and he was spoiled.
Devilment
'Mikey was always out and about very early in the morning. He was the one guy you could never keep in the house, up gone out. Up to all sorts of devilment down through the days, but boys will be boys.
'The weekend began, I rang him Friday evening and he said 'Mam, I have no plans for the weekend'. I said 'OK then, that's grand'.
Firemen Brendan Morrissey and George Hamilton were on the scene
'The owner (of the car) Kenneth Sullivan, was not known to Mikey. He had to run across the road to get another friend of his to sit with the children while he was leaving the house.
'That guy then was shouting not to get into the car.. But anyway they got into the car and that's all about all I do know about that morning.'
Mikey's younger brother Evan said he was like another father figure to him.
'Mikey loved Metallica. He'd be listening to music, there was always music in the car. Mikey was one of the guys who just wanted to have fun and go wild, get in a car, and just go for a spin,' he said.
Mary Bermingham, from Banteer Co Cork, was a front seat passenger in a Citroen Picasso – the other car that morning – which was driven by her partner Gary Fenton, from Cobh.
'I saw a Santa thing online in Waterford, similar to Lapland. Last minute I booked that and I thought 'this will be great'. Of course I told the kids, they were so happy and excited,' recalls Mary.
That morning as the family ventured off to Dungarvan they decided to go straight there rather than stop for diesel as they children were excited about getting there.
Mary has four children, three girls and a boy, who has cerebral palsy.
Chloe, Mary's daughter who was airlifted due to her injuries, remembers seeing the oncoming car.
'I had an earphone in because as a teenager I was obsessed about music and I had an earphone in listening to music in the back of the car,' she remembers.
'There was like half a second, I looked up at the road. Suddenly there was a car right there in front of us. When I looked up from my phone, I just seen a car coming head on and I remember that I did panic.
Bang
'I still remember that bang. I can still hear that bang. I can feel my body being thrown forward still, it's just horrific.'
Emergency services were called to the scene with firemen Brendan Morrissey and George Hamilton explaining on the programme how they had to carefully get the family out of the Citroen.
Just recently the two men got to meet Mary and a now grown up Chole.
'I knew that they were drink driving but not to the extent that they were. When you hear it out loud. Obviously I don't think they set out to kill anybody or to crash into us, but…,' reflects Chloe.
Mary's brother Christopher was aged 24 when he was killed in a single vehicle car crash in 2014.
She believes he was with her in spirit helping her during her ordeal when she was fighting for her life on the day of the crash.
'It just changed lives, a ripple effect on so many people. Their own families included,' she maintains.
'Maybe if my own brother hadn't passed in the same way, I mightn't have that bit of compassion, but I do because I know the pain it brings, so I do think about the families.'
Impact: Anatomy of a car crash tonight RTÉ 1 9.35pm and RTÉ Player.
Parents Michael and Ann Tobin
Today's News in 90 Seconds - July 28th
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Irish Examiner
14 minutes ago
- Irish Examiner
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Sunday World
5 hours ago
- Sunday World
Inside the oldest cold case murder solved by UK police
Enquiries led police to Cork, but ultimately their killer was a lot closer to home The man they were there to arrest, 92-year-old Ryland Headley, was not expecting them. It had been 57 years since he raped and murdered an elderly woman in her home, and he thought he'd gotten away with. As the police officers knocked on the white front door, they heard stirring inside. 'What do you want?' the frail pensioner asked. 'Could you open the door, please? We'd like to speak with you,' she told him. 'No, no, no, you can't come in, what do you want to come in for?' the voice replied. 'It's a bit sensitive, so we'd like to come inside and speak to you properly,' she told him. Mrs Dunne's front window was found open by neighbours on the morning of June 28 1967 (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) Further refusing, Headley tried to convince them to leave, telling cops he was a sick old man. But Naomi and Jo weren't taking no for an answer. 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After Teddy's death in 1945, the circle of friends Louisa had built around her faded, and she ultimately became estranged from her two daughters, Iris and Edna. Headley murdered Louisa Dunne in 1967 Louisa's life became lonelier than it had ever been, and she fell into alcohol addiction. But she wasn't completely alone.. Louisa forged close friendships with her neighbours, and eventually she remarried Irish widower John H. Dunne nine years before his death in 1961. She led a quiet life, and among her few treasured possessions were her books and the deeds to her home. News in 90 Seconds - Tuesday, July 29 On the evening of 27th June 1967, Louisa visited her best friend of 30 years, Alice Clarke. Once a week, Louisa would drop in on Alice, who was immobile due to illness, to check in on her. That evening, she left to walk the short distance home, telling Alice she was heading to bed. The following day, another neighbour, Violet Fortune, noticed Louisa didn't collect the newspaper she had left for her on the garden wall, a regular part of her morning routine. Her neighbours also noticed that despite being security-conscious, her downstairs sitting room window was wide open, and she had not been seen that day. Concerned for her well-being, one young neighbour went into her house to check on her, only to be met with a grisly scene. The 74-year-old was lying dead on her living room floor. She was fully dressed but for her underwear which was found around her ankles. A scarf and tights were tied around her neck, and there was blood coming from her ear. Louisa Dunne was killed in 1967 (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) Numerous neighbours had heard muffled screams the night prior, and later they realised the cries for help must have been from Louisa. The police were called, and a murder investigation was launched. Headed up by Detective Chief Superintendent Reginald Hicks, the police quickly established that the grandmother had been raped and her home robbed. Her cause of death was recorded as asphyxia due to strangulation and pressure on the mouth. As police sealed off the home, they methodically collected evidence from the scene, including a palm print on an upstairs bedroom window In the immediate aftermath, 19,000 men and boys aged between 15 and 60 within the Easton area were fingerprinted as part of the investigation, but no matches were found. With more than 8,000 people interviewed, the investigation even widened to Ireland. Palm prints found at the property in Britannia Road (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) Gardai assisted police with their enquiries as they searched Cork for a 20-year-old Army Absentee who lived near Mrs Dunne, but fled about a fortnight after her death. 'We want to know where the man was on the day of the murder and why he left suddenly,' Reginald Hicks told the Bristol Evening Post in August 1967. 'It is essential that everyone who acted in this way should be eliminated, if possible, from our inquiries.' But just like every other lead in the case, the enquiry went nowhere, and the case eventually went cold. Reinvestigation In 2023, the murder was reopened for a third time by the Major Crimes Review team at Avon & Somerset Police. It was initially examined in 2009 and again in 2014, but it wasn't until the head of the cold case unit, Detective Inspector Dave Marchant, began reviewing the case with fresh eyes that they got the breakthrough they were waiting for. Titled 'Operation Beatle', it was one of the force's 30 unsolved murder cases, and had 18 boxes of evidence stored away at a high-security warehouse in the hopes of one day solving the murder. Detectives sorted through the exhibits in their archives, searching for an intimate swab that was collected during Louisa's autopsy, but it wasn't found. DNA evidence linking the murder of Mrs Dunne to Ryland Headley was recovered from her blue skirt (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) Instead, investigators singled out the skirt Louisa was wearing at the time of her murder, which had never been tested for DNA. When scientists examined the blue calf-length a-line skirt, they uncovered a semen stain which gave them the complete DNA profile of an unknown male, and with it, a break in the case they could have only hoped for. But it would take some time before they would be able to put a name to their suspect, that's even if their DNA was already in the National DNA database. Hoping that their perp had previously had their genetic information entered into the system during another police investigation, they sent off the DNA and waited for a hit. With luck on their side, they got it. A man who had his DNA taken by police in 2012 as part of an investigation into an unrelated crime was found to be a 'billion to one' match. It was Ryland Headley. But they didn't have a case just yet. The Killer Police began investigating their suspect, and found that at the time of the murder, the then 34-year-old was living on Picton Street, only 2.7 km from Louisa Dunne's home. A railway worker originally from Jamaica, Ryland Headley emigrated to the UK in 1952, and married in 1958. An old family friend described the father-of-three as someone that was so quiet he was 'barely noticed'. Picton Street was located just outside the radius in which police collected the prints of 19,000 men and boys, meaning Headley narrowly avoided detection. It wasn't the first time he dodged handing over his prints to the police, either. During another unrelated incident, he was asked to give his prints to police, and while he gave fingerprints, he told police his wrist was 'too sore' due to arthritis to give them a palm print. Shortly after the murder, Headley uprooted his family and moved to Ipswich, where he went on to commit more heinous crimes. Re-Arrest An hour after his arrest in November 2024, Headley was booked into police custody. During processing, he was asked if he had ever been arrested before. Headley thought for a moment before nodding his head. Ryland Headley in custody last year (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) 10 years after the murder of Louisa Dunne, police were on the hunt for a sex attacker targeting elderly women. He was dubbed the 'Ipswich Rapist', and the public were warned to lock their doors amid fears the predator could kill if he wasn't stopped. Little did they know, he had already done so. Two women, in their 70s and 80s, both widowed and living alone, were raped in their homes in October 1977 by an intruder who broke in during the night and threatened to kill them. Fingerprints were left at both scenes, and 5,000 men had their prints taken as part of the inquiry. This time, one of those men was Ryland Headley, and he was arrested and tried for rape. Following a trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Citing that the penalty was 'excessive' for a man of previous good character and reputation with no convictions, his legal team appealed the sentence. Headley was interviewed in November last year (Avon and Somerset Police/PA) His barrister claimed that the rapes were impulsive and committed during a time of 'unusual circumstances' in his marriage, blaming his sexual frustration on being unhappily wed to an 'ambitious and demanding' wife. The court agreed and found he was unlikely to reoffend, so in 1979 his sentence was reduced to seven years, of which he served two. Ryland Headley left prison in the early 1980s, and remained a free man for more than forty years. Evidence & The Trial Now that he was back in police custody, the prosecution prepared for trial. Police were finally able to take his prints, and he was matched to the palm print left on the back bedroom window at Louisa Dunne's home. Despite this, and all the other evidence they presented to him during an interview, Headley repeatedly replied 'no comment', much to the frustration of detectives. Murderer and rapist Ryland Headley The pensioner denied knowing Louisa, being at the scene, or committing the murder. He coldly refused to give any indication as to why he did what he did. While the defense fought for the evidence of his previous rape convictions to be omitted from the proceedings, the prosecution fought for their inclusion as the victims were so similar to Louisa Dunne. All three were elderly women who lived at home alone, all three were raped, and while Louisa Dunne was killed, the other two were threatened with murder by their attacker. The judge eventually ruled that the evidence could be heard, and the two-week trial began at Bristol Crown Court on June 16th 2025. The court heard further evidence about a series of burglaries Headley committed between 1973 and 1978. Ryland Headley has been told he will die in prison (Elizabeth Cook/PA) After 3 days of deliberations, by a majority verdict of 10-2, the jury found Ryland Headley guilty, and on July 1st 2025, he was sentenced to life behind bars, with a minimum term of 20 years. At sentencing, Mr. Justice Sweeting branded the murder a 'pitiless and cruel act by a depraved man.' 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Irish Examiner
5 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
The racist attack on an Indian man in Tallaght recently was not a once-off. Ireland must act
When I first watched the now-removed social media video of a man bloodied and stripped in a Dublin street, I felt my stomach turn. The images were violent, yes, but the silence of the onlookers hit harder. Helpless and humiliated, the victim of the ruthless actions of a few anti-social elements stood surrounded, not by support, but by scrutiny. No one intervened until much later. And somehow, in the noise that followed, the narrative became not about the victim, but about invented claims against him. What happened in Tallaght on the evening of July 19 wasn't just a senseless brutality. It was the culmination of misinformation, racial profiling and a deeper discomfort with confronting racism when it shows up at our doorsteps. As someone from India now living in Dublin, I find this incident both frightening and painfully familiar. Within hours of the man's video going viral, false rumours about him had spread like wildfire on social media. The original lie that he had exposed himself to children was debunked by the Gardaí. Yet, the damage was done. People believed the falsehood because it was easy to do so. In our digitally connected world, fabricated information often travels faster and farther than facts. This is what happens when misinformation and disinformation are taken at face value. It is deeply unfortunate that something like this even happened in the first place. However, this one incident has triggered broader debates and much-needed conversations. It has nudged people to think more actively about racial violence and false narratives that perpetuate such violence. Protesters marching to the Dáil to protest against the Indian man's brutal assault in Tallaght. Photo: Leah Farrell/© In the days since, I've heard countless stories from others in the Indian and wider migrant community. Many recounted experiences of racial slurs, glares, harassment and in some cases, assault, which go unreported or are not investigated swiftly. The common thread in most of these stories? The perpetrators were often teenagers. This incident has heightened my safety concerns. I still believe in Ireland's potential as a welcoming place. I've been embraced by Irish friends, neighbours and colleagues who have shown immense warmth. But I now walk a little faster past certain groups. I look over my shoulder more than I used to. And I find myself worrying more for my friends and for those who are yet to arrive here. What has brought some solace during this painful time is the powerful mobilisation of the Indian community and the support from other migrant groups as well. Last week, a delegation of the Indian community met with Ambassador Akhilesh Mishra at the Embassy of India in Ireland to present their concerns. They were answered with compassion and clarity which is the need of the hour. It was confirmed that the matter has been reported to higher authorities in India and Ireland. Margaret Byrne from Tallaght with her dog Pablo at an anti-racism protest organised by the Community group Dublin South-West Together (DSWT) in Tallaght at the weekend. Photo: Leah Farrell/© Taking into account the fact that many Indian students come to Ireland every year, a safety advisory for such incoming students will soon be issued. These initial steps are welcome, but what is needed is strong safeguards and speedy investigations. Community leader Raghav Dixit, who helped convene the delegation, echoed what many of us have been feeling. 'The first and foremost thing about the speedy investigation. Usually in such sensitive cases, the Garda Commissioner or Superintendent makes a public statement. Nobody has made that statement so far.' All of us appreciate the Gardaí's formal acknowledgement of the incident as racially motivated but it has come far too late. There are also concerns about Ireland's juvenile justice system, where there is a need to reform how serious offences committed by minors are handled. Let me be clear, this is not an Indian versus Irish issue. This is something that concerns all of us. This is about accountability, safety and human dignity. Members of the migrant community in Ireland marching to the Dáil to protest against the Indian man's brutal assault in Tallaght. In the days since, I've heard countless stories from others in the Indian and wider migrant community of racial slurs, glares, harassment and in some cases, assault, which go unreported or are not investigated swiftly. Photo: Leah Farrell/© Migrants don't just come to Ireland seeking jobs or education; they come here to build lives. Many South Asians arrive on critical skills visas, filling essential roles in healthcare, IT and education. We contribute, we belong, and we deserve protection. What we do not deserve is for our pain to be politicised or dismissed. The rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric online only fuels division and endangers real people. Thankfully, we have also seen compassion. From people like Jennifer Murray who stepped up to help the victim and gave out a clear message on what humanity truly means and from everybody who has come out in our support. Now we must look further and beyond. The Gardaí must be resourced adequately. Investigations must be swift and transparent. Hate crime laws must be enforced decisively, not after weeks of public pressure. And we must build solidarity, not walls, between communities. I still want to live here. I still feel at home, like many from India who have become naturalised citizens of Ireland and also represent us in the government. But silence is not an option anymore. Hate needs to be called out. If Ireland is to truly be the country it strives to be, diverse, kind, just, then what happened in Tallaght must be the beginning of a reckoning, not just another news cycle. I remember what several migrant communities shouted at a recent march in Dublin in condemnation of this incident: 'This is not the Ireland we came to, this is not what Ireland represents.' Let's make sure that remains true. Read More Colin Sheridan: Institutional racism wears a necktie
