A 48-YEAR-OLD man was jailed for two years when he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death in Wexford.
John Keegan, of Farran Carraig, Duncannon, Co Wexford, was before Judge Alice Doyle at Wexford Circuit Court on a plea of guilty to dangerous driving causing the death of Martin Lewis at Libgate, Kilmore Quay, in Wexford, on February 9th, 2008.
Keegan also pleaded guilty to driving with excess alcohol on the same occasion.
Prosecuting garda Ger Heaney told the court that the accused man tried to pass a fish lorry on a bend with a continuous white line, pulled back in and struck a grass verge, leading to the car crashing into a ditch, killing passenger Martin Lewis.
The incident, he said, occurred at 8.35am while the accused and others had been drinking at a house earlier the previous night into the morning.
He also said that the accused had 133mgms of alcohol to 80 millilitres of blood when he later provided a sample at Wexford General Hospital.
Sentencing the defendant to two years on each charge, to run concurrently, with the final six months suspended, Judge Doyle said that the defendant had been drinking the previous night, but the aggravating factor is that he must have had a lot of alcohol given the level he was at three hours after the crash had occurred.