A 20-year-old man appeared in court on Monday charged in connection with a crash that killed a mother and son and a young footballer.
The accused, Keith Lennon, with an address in Forest Park, Dromintee, Co Armagh, appeared before Dundalk District Court charged with dangerous driving causing the death of three people and failing to stay at the scene of a crash and report it.
Evidence was given by Garda Ronan Costello, Dundalk of arresting and charging the accused. He told the court he arrested him at 28 minutes past midnight on Monday and he charged him at 1am.
He made no reply, after caution, to either charge, the court heard.
The three victims, all from Northern Ireland, died in the crash in Co Louth in the early hours of Saturday.
The three people who died were named locally as Mary Faxton, who was in her 80s, and her son Kevin Faxton, who was in his 50s, and Bryan Magill, who was 25.
The two older victims were both occupants in one of the cars involved in the collision on the N1 at Carrickcarnan at about 2.15am on Saturday.
The younger man was travelling in the other car. Another man in his 20s, who sustained non-life threatening injuries in the crash, was also in that car.
Defence solicitor Aimeé McCumiskey applied for bail to which Garda Costello objected and he referenced the O’Callaghan rules.
He handed in a copy of his objections to the Judge and said there were a number of grounds including the seriousness of the charges and the fear he was a flight risk as he does not live in the jurisdiction.
Ms McCumiskey made a number of points to the Judge including that all four grandparents of her client live in the jurisdiction and were present in court. He has no previous convictions and enjoys the presumption of innocence, she said.
After hearing the bail application Judge Deirdre Gearty remanded the accused in custody to Cloverhill District Court on March 5.
At the request of Ms McCumiskey, the Judge recommended that he receive whatever medical attention he may require while in custody.
The accused was wearing a grey hoodie and jeans and did not speak during proceedings.
Mr Magill was from Newry, while the Faxtons were from the nearby Co Armagh village of Bessbrook.
The crash was one of a series of fatal incidents on Ireland’s roads over the weekend.
Four other people died.
A 16-year-old girl was killed after the car she was travelling in struck a wall in Oughterard, Co Galway, in the early hours of Sunday.
In Co Monaghan, a male pedestrian aged in his 20s suffered fatal injuries when he was struck by a lorry on the N54 between Monaghan and Clones on Saturday morning.
On Friday night, a man and a woman in their 60s died in a crash involving a car and a jeep on the N55 in Ballinagh, Co Cavan.
