Mayo judge puts boy-racer off road for 25 years

Mayo judge puts Donegal boy-racer off road for 25 years


A MAYO judge disqualified a Donegal boy-racer from driving for 25 years and jailed him for 22 months after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving.
Kevin Dunleavy (24) of Kerrykeel, Co Donegal appeared before Judge Seamus Hughes at last week’s sitting of Letterkenny District Court where he pleaded to eight counts of dangerous driving in the county in July and August.
Mr Dunleavy’s younger brother, Cathal Dunleavy (21) was jailed for three years last March for unlawfully taking a car in Letterkenny on the night Garda Robert McCallion was killed. The 29-year-old garda from Swinford was struck by the car while at the scene of a car theft and later died from his injuries. Cathal Dunleavy was at the scene but was not the driver of the car that struck the garda.
Judge Hughes - a Westport native - said Kevin Dunleavy had the ‘most auspicious number of previous convictions he had ever seen before him’ and noted that Donegal was notorious for young people and their dangerous driving.
Judge Hughes added that Dunleavy’s record was ‘appalling’ and outlining the charges before the court said: “there you go, but for the grace of God, that you didn’t kill someone, a family in a car.”
He asked Dunleavy to step into the witness box saying, ‘I would like to hear from the author of his own misfortune’. He told the father of two that he had ‘run out of road’, before adding, “you started out on a life of crime at 16 years of age and despite the fact that you have been in various courts you have learned nothing.”
The court heard that on July 1 last the defendant took off at high speed in a red Toyota Corolla towards Milford and was travelling at 120kph in an 80kph zone, leading to sparks rising from the bottom of the car on rough roads. He also took two turns on the wrong side of the road and failed to stop at a stop sign. Gardaí pursued him across eight townlands before stopping the pursuit, deeming it too dangerous.
On August 12, gardaí came across the car in Glenvar and it took off breaking the speed limit and taking bends on the wrong side of the road. He was also observed taking a sharp handbrake turn as he approached a Y junction.
Judge Hughes told Dunleavy that if he could have sentenced him to ten years he would have. “I am not going to tolerate young men driving around like this, they could end the lives of other people. If I could have given you more I would have.”