Anatomy of a Car Crash: Part 3 the investigation

A road traffic collision impacts on the lives of hundreds of people, including the professionals who pick up the pieces after fatal accidents on the roads. Video: Niamh Guckian

The scene of the major car crash in which two men, Gearid Scully and Terence Beagan, lost their lives at Mount Falcon, Ballina, Co Mayo. Photograph: Keith Heneghan/Phocus.

At about 4.40am on New Years Day, two men died in a collision on a high-quality stretch of the N26, near Ballina, Co Mayo. They were the first fatal road deaths of 2014.

In the months since, Peter Murtagh has been investigating this crash and its aftermath.

In the third instalment of a four-part series he looks at the hours and days after the crash, when the forensic investigator and the pathologist tried to establish exactly how the men had died and why.

When Castlebar-based pathologist Dr Fadel Bennani listens to RT Radio Ones Morning Ireland over breakfast, he dreads to hear of a fatal road crash in Co Mayo.No crash? Thank God, he says, because it is very traumatic to everybody.

Wednesday, January 1st, 2014, did not begin well for Dr Bennani.There were two bodies for autopsy.

An autopsy is the medical examination of a body to determine the cause of death. In Ireland, it is carried out frequently on the orders of a coroner when a death has occurred suddenly, violently or without obvious explanation. While the manner of Gearid Scully and Terence Beagans deaths was evident, the precise cause was not immediately obvious.

As the Garda scenes of crime forensic investigator, Sgt Gabriel McLoughlin, set about examining the N26 crash site, mortuary technicians began preparing Scully and Beagans bodies for their autopsies.

The first thing that happens when a body arrives at the morgue is that it is lifted out of the removal shell. Bodies from vehicle crashes or accidents at work may come in body bags; those from a hospital or nursing home more usually come wrapped in a white sheet.

The rest is here:
Anatomy of a Car Crash: Part 3 the investigation