Irish police tried to stop a car with spike strips, but when the driver turned around and headed the wrong way down the highway, command told them to pull back. Hours later, five teenagers were dead.
There is a terrible moment in a police chase when the suspect does something so reckless that the officers have to let them go. You back off to save lives. But sometimes, backing off does not stop the tragedy. It just changes where it happens.
Around 3 a.m. on Sunday, a car was tearing down the M9 motorway in County Kildare. Irish police were right behind it. They threw down stinger devices to blow the tires.
Instead of stopping, the driver took what police call “evasive action.” The car spun around and started driving the wrong way down the highway, straight into oncoming traffic.
That is when the order came down. Stop the chase.
Tara McManus, from the Garda Representative Association, explained that regular road officers do not have high-speed pursuit training.
“At that stage our members would not continue in that pursuit, and the directions that were given by our command and control centre were to disengage,” she said.
Minutes later, the car slammed head-on into another vehicle.
Five teenagers, Joe Carthy, Alex McCarthy, Kamil Pustkowski, Jeremy O’Brien, and Jack Kennedy, were killed. In the other car, two women and a seven-year-old boy were left fighting for their lives.
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The cleanup was brutal. McManus called the scene “horrific” for the officers who had to pick up the pieces of a chase they were ordered to walk away from.
For the families left behind, the shock is absolute. Leo Lieghio, who lost his own 16-year-old daughter to a reckless driver years ago, knows exactly what those parents are facing right now.
“Their lives have been turned upside down through no fault of their own,” he said. “They will be going through hell.”
Ireland has already seen 123 road deaths this year. The police are asking for tougher laws. The victims are asking for justice. But five kids are still gone, and the officers who had to watch it unfold from a distance are left wondering if there was anything else they could have done.
