THE WIDOW of the man killed in the crash, a retired school teacher, described the panic she felt as the man responsible for the collision left her and her fatally injured husband trapped in a car she thought was going to explode.
Cathleen Lawless delivered a victim impact statement at Limerick Circuit Court. The retired maths teacher told the court that life was a lonely place without her 52-year-old husband, also a retired schoolteacher from Clonmel in Co Tipperary.
Speaking after the sentencing, Mrs Lawless said she had waited 380 days for closure and called for drink drivers to be put off the road for many years.
"To this day I can't call this an accident. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Jason Gormley simply got out of his vehicle and ran away," she told the court.
"He left me with my husband fatally injured beside me while I was trapped in the car badly injured unable to do anything. He never offered to help. I will never forget the panic I felt when I got the awful smell of burning and heat and I thought the car was going to ignite," she recalled.
Speaking outside afterwards she added "people drink and drive and still do it. After 380 days I have found this, the hardest part of the whole thing to accept, that it takes so long to get any type of closure and I feel there's a bit of closure today," she said.
Mrs Lawless told the court her 16-year-old son Aidan jnr is unable to talk about his father or visit his grave and she worries deeply about him. She said their daughter Rachel "was in her second year of college at the time of her father's death. Aidan insisted on collecting her each Friday and returning with her on Sunday nights - 'to keep her safe, he said'."